


Transgressions of the Heart

by SapphireSmoke



Series: Residing in the Grey [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Asphyxiation, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Gags, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Orgasm Denial, Painplay, Power Play, Regret, Romance, Rough Sex, Sex Magic, Spanking, Strap-Ons, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:39:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 204,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphireSmoke/pseuds/SapphireSmoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma had fallen in love with a woman that didn’t really exist. Regina, <i>her</i> Regina… she wasn’t real. It had all been a lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> **Beta(s):** [BellaRei713](http://www.fanfiction.net/u/641948/BellaRei713)  
>  **Predecessor:** [Of Love and Loathing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/657101/chapters/1197598)  
>  **A/N:** Fair warning that this fic is far angstier than its predecessor, and that it’ll get worse before it gets better. Also, although I was originally intending to follow the same schedule of bi-weekly updates, real life seems to have made that plan a little more difficult. Therefore I’ll only be posting once a week until things settle down and I can find more time to dedicate to this fic.

  
  
  
**CHAPTER ONE  
Remembrance**   


There was an eerie sense of stillness just moments before a storm broke out over the horizon, shrouding the quaint, waterfront town of Storybrooke, Maine in an array of bright colors and blinding emotion. The façade of their given reality cracked and dissipated, leaving behind a chaotic atmosphere born from conflicting bouts of relief, confusion, and fear, as those who were lost found themselves once more in a place as foreign as what lay far in the sky above them.

Two seats to the left in a crowded classroom, a boy smiled.

Most kept themselves still whilst memories rearranged themselves, accommodating two lives into one singular being. Recognition for some came quicker than others, furthering the panic within the ones who remained behind. But for Henry Mills, a mere boy of ten years old who had known nothing else but the reality he was born to, his world stood nearly unfazed by the crippling truth that had seemed to knock the breath from so many around him. After carefully rising from his seat, eyes trained on the teacher at the head of the classroom, the child paused midstride, the mild trepidation caused by one short moment of doubt. 

He needed to be sure.

And _there,_ in one brief flicker behind forest green eyes, was the look Henry had been waiting for. It was filled with love, with disbelief, and then acceptance, prompting a wide grin to spread from ear to ear as happiness warmed his heart. “Grandma?” he asked, voice small, as though Henry himself still could not believe that this moment had actually come to pass.

“Henry…” The woman moved towards him, her timid stature becoming replaced by self-assurance and strength as Snow White emerged from the ashes of Mary Margaret Blanchard. Emotion swam in her eyes as the realization of who really stood before her came to light, prompting a singular tear to slide down her pale, angular face. “ _Henry!_ ”

Henry gripped on tight when she enveloped him in a crushing hug, experiencing for the first time the love of his maternal grandmother. It filled him with a sense of hope, of happiness, and of pride, for he knew how this had happened. His mothers – the Evil Queen from the Enchanted Forest, and the Savior who had been sent from the realm – had suddenly realized that they were each other’s fairytale ending. Destined for one another, their love transcended the boundaries between realities, and finally, _finally_ Henry would be allowed to have the family he always wanted, the family he had hoped for. 

Love had conquered all, destroying the evil in his mother’s heart. Emma had broken the curse and set her free and now, finally, Henry knew without a shadow of a doubt, that everything would be alright. 

After all, no storybook that he had ever read ended unhappily.

[x]

There was a moment, right after Daniel had died, when Regina was sure she would never be able to breathe again. The weight of her sorrow constricted her throat, her chest, choking the life out of the last shred of hope that had lain deep within the depths of her heart. It destroyed her, utterly and completely, and she had been certain that nothing would ever compare to the pain she felt in that moment, for it had stolen the light from within her.

Oh, how _wrong_ she turned out to be.

Emma Swan had rekindled that fire that used to burn so brightly within her heart, filling Regina with a newfound sense of unwavering hope. The happy ending she had always craved, delivered right to her doorstep by the son they both shared. Endlessly trapped in a world that never changed, Emma had brought light to a place shrouded in the darkest of clouds, turning the clock forward and freeing Regina from the madness of her own creation. The woman had challenged her, fulfilled her, accepted her, _loved_ her. And for one short moment in her many years of existence, Regina Mills had truly felt alive. 

Yet now, with the way her insides twisted violently within her, crushing her very soul to dust as the picture of perfection she had been offered shattered before her eyes, Regina was certain that even death itself would be less painful than this.

Emma, whose gaze was filled with so much love mere moments prior, now looked at Regina as though she didn’t know who she was anymore. And perhaps it was a fair assessment, for Regina had made the mistake of lying about nearly everything except for the depth of her emotions, but logic was crushed by the weight of her sorrow and so she begged for the forgiveness that somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew she would never really deserve.

“Please,” Regina gasped, nearly choking on her own words as her throat constricted painfully. “Please, Emma, listen to me…”

“You… this—this is just some kind of… _fucked up_ joke, right?” Emma stuttered, her mind unable to accept the reality that had been painted very clearly in front of her eyes. “Because you can’t expect me to… to actually fucking _believe_ —” Her words were cut off by a bitter, disbelieving laugh and she shook her head as though the motion would somehow have the power to bring sense into the chaos they had created.

Regina reached for her in desperation, fingers barely brushing skin before Emma ripped her arm away as though she had been burned. “Don’t fucking touch me right now, Regina,” she snapped without thought, backing up a few steps to establish the distance she sorely needed in that moment. Her words cut deep, but the wounded look on Regina’s face went either unnoticed or uncared for. “Or…” Emma looked like she was going to be ill as she momentarily allowed the truth to outweigh her fervent denial, “or is that even your name? _Fuck._ I…” Her face paled, the reality of the situation crushing her sanity as she tried to pull the veil over her eyes once more. “I can’t—can’t do this. I have to…”

It was as though something snapped in Emma, kicking her into high gear as she made quick work of gathering her jeans off the ground, nearly tripping in her haste to get them on her body. Regina watched her, wishing that she knew the magic words to make her stay. But tears were running down her cheeks, the force of her sobs wracking her entire body. She could barely breathe, let alone speak. 

Still, she had to try. “My name,” she gasped out after a long moment, trying to make her words at least be distinguishable through her tears, “ _is_ Regina. I never—Emma, I… I swear, I never meant—”

“To what?” Emma exclaimed, furiously throwing her t-shirt over her head. “To _lie?_ Fuck you, Regina. If this is…” Her hands flew out haplessly, eyes wild and frightened as reality as she knew it crumbled around her. She couldn’t even bring herself to say the words, yet still finished with, “You… you knew _exactly_ what you were doing. So don’t you stand there and fucking tell me—”

“I was afraid,” Regina tried, desperate for Emma to see her side of things. She knew that if she had ever told her the truth that this, _this very situation_ , would happen. Regina didn’t want to lose the best thing she had ever had, but Emma was hearing none of her excuses.

“You were _selfish!_ ” Emma shouted at her, looking as though Regina had cut her deeper than anyone ever had in her life. The words stung, but only because the truth in them was unquestionable. “All you do is lie and manipulate so things can go your way! You don’t… fuck, you don’t think of _anyone_ but yourself, do you?” Emma set her jaw, a hard look in her eyes before crushing her with the final blow. “And the _only_ reason you’re sorry right now, Regina, is because _you got caught._ ”

The accusation in the words knocked the breath from Regina’s lungs. She stared at her, tears running down her cheeks as she tried, desperately, to form a response, a _reason._ But the truth was, she would have never told Emma, should this not have happened. Regina would have never offered up the truth because it wouldn’t benefit her in any sense, and the realization that she truly was this person Emma had every reason to hate crushed her heart into dust. The one thing, the _one damn thing_ Regina knew Emma hated, beyond anything else, was being lied to, and yet she had done it time and time again without a care in the world.

What did that even say about her?

“Emma…” the name sounded broken falling from her lips, a plea that held neither weight nor bearing after the revelation of what really lay beneath the mask of Regina Mills. Emma could barely look at her.

Everything, all of the madness and despair, seemed to hit Emma once more in that long moment of silence. Her hands were shaking, her breathing uneven, and she looked as though she were about to fall apart on the spot. “This is… _insane,_ ” she breathed, her eyes wild and desperate as her instinctual need to run took over. “Fuck. I can’t… I have to— _fuck._ ”

And then she was gone, fleeing from the room so quickly that Regina barely had time to process that she had even moved. Once her brain had caught up to the situation however, Regina’s body acted on autopilot and she ran after her, desperate for Emma to stay and hear her out before her mother no doubt found her. Snow would fill her head with the insistence that Regina was evil, tell her all of the horrible things she had done, and although Regina knew she had done so much wrong by Emma, she also knew that if nothing else, she _had_ to be the one to tell her the whole truth. All of it. There was no way Emma could ever find it within her heart to forgive her if she did not.

Emma yanked open the front door, but before she could barrel her way through it and out into the unknown, Regina clasped onto her wrist, spinning the distressed woman around to meet her gaze. “Please, just… _wait—!_ ”

“Let go of me!” Emma shouted, violently ripping her wrist out of her grasp. “You have no fucking right to touch me, Regina, not anymore!”

Regina could feel her heart shattering at those words, yet did not move to touch her again. She was right; she really didn’t deserve that pleasure any longer. Her mistake had cost her everything. “Emma, please, I… _I love you_. I promise, if you’ll only stay, I’ll—”

“What, _tell me the truth?_ ” Emma spat, looking at Regina as though her very words were born from mockery and cruel intent. She stepped close to her, eyes burning hot like fire as she finished scathingly, “A little late for that, don’t you think, _Your Majesty?_ ”

Regina noticeably winced at the form of address. “Please don’t call me that,” she tried, voice small as regret and shame colored her face. She couldn’t look Emma in the eye after that, for that title was something she had never wanted, and once she had it, it consumed her and twisted her into the very thing she never wished to become. There was a reason she had stripped herself of it. It was her mother’s dream, _not_ hers.

“Why?” Emma challenged, trying to find strength throughout her urge to crumple into a ball just to get away from it all. Her voice cracked, the desperation for denial suddenly fighting against the truth she was trying to voice with hesitant uncertainty. “That’s… _jesus,_ that’s—it’s what you are… right? The Evil fucking Queen…” Emma looked as though even saying the words made her want to vomit on the spot.

Regina’s eyes shown with fresh tears at _Emma_ labeling her as such, but she would not let them fall. If she did, she knew trying to find her voice would be far too difficult a task. “Not anymore,” she breathed softly, trying to make Emma understand that she had changed, that she had changed because of _her._ “Evil can’t love… remember?” Regina looked up at Emma, hoping the words would make her remember the conversation they once had, a conversation that had given Regina such hope that one day Emma would truly accept all parts of her. She needed her to see all the shades of grey that lay deep within her soul, but perhaps now, in this moment, it really was too much to ask for.

Emma could barely comprehend the reality of the situation, let alone begin to accept it.

“No,” she agreed, but it wasn’t with the recognition that Regina had prayed for as Emma finished pointedly with, “but liars still can.”

Regina felt as though she had been punched in the gut, the look of betrayal on Emma’s face at her own words making Regina feel as though she were falling. There was a note of finality with the word ‘liar’ that was hard to ignore and Regina wished, more than anything else, that she could turn back the clock and do it all over again, for lying to Emma might very well be the worst mistake she had ever made. 

Emma tensed her jaw and swallowed hard, desperately trying to keep anger as her dominant emotion. Regina could see the task was a futile one however, and as Emma’s eyes began to glisten with fresh tears, the brunette felt as though the image was tearing her heart from her chest. “I trusted you, Regina,” Emma whispered, distress painting across her features from being betrayed by the woman that she loved so deeply.

“I’m sorry,” Regina choked out, her words muddled by the slew of fresh tears that fell from her eyes. They were just words, words that probably meant nothing in the long run, but Regina still felt as though she needed to say them. “Emma, I’m _so_ —” But her words were cut off, panic overtaking her as something in the distance, beyond Emma and the open door, caught her eye. “Oh god,” she breathed, not entirely certain what it was, but knowing it was born from magic; _her_ magic.

Emma sensed the shift in the air around them and immediately turned to see what it was that had spooked Regina. Whatever she was expecting, it certainly wasn’t what she was confronted with. In the distance a dark purple cloud was slowly drawing nearer, consuming everything in its wake. The fear it instilled in Emma nearly knocked her backwards and she fell against Regina’s chest, who instinctively grasped for her hand, holding onto her tightly. The blonde did not pull away.

“What the hell _is_ that?” Emma breathed, the volume of her words suppressed by her disbelief and fright. 

The reality of the situation suddenly kicked Regina into high gear and she told her quickly, “We need to get to Henry.” If the curse broke, that cloud could only mean one thing, and if it was going to happen then they needed to be _together._ Regina tried to get to her car, but Emma seemed frozen to the spot and tugging on her hand bore no result. “Emma, _now!_ ” Regina screamed, needing the woman to snap out of her haze. 

Emma blinked at the force of Regina’s words and as her eyes landed on her, she could very plainly see the panic that had overtaken Regina’s expression. It was that alone, it seemed, that allowed Emma to realize the severity of the situation. In the blink of an eye she moved, now being the one to drag _Regina_ to her car.

They each got in quickly, but it seemed to not be quick enough as Emma looked behind them, seeing the cloud get closer. “Go, _go!_ ” she shouted at her, slamming her hand on the dashboard to try to get Regina to move faster.

“I’m _trying!_ ” Regina yelled back, hastily putting the car in reverse and nearly peeling out of the driveway. The tires screeched and when she braked to change gears, the momentum pulled them forward before slamming them back into the seats. Pressing her foot forcefully on the gas pedal, Regina sped down Mifflin street in record time, not looking back for fear she would realize they would never get to the school in time.

“What is it?” Emma exclaimed, unable to tear her eyes away from the looming threat behind them. Emma Swan could confront a lot of things head on, but magic, it seemed, was beyond her comprehension and skill. She couldn’t shoot a gun at it after all, and it seemed the idea of being completely defenseless against the unknown frightened her quite terribly. “Regina, _what the fuck is it gonna do?!_ ”

“I think it’s going to send us back,” Regina replied, her breathing erratic as she realized that, once again, everything was going to change. What frightened her more, however, was the idea that they might not all go back together unless they were already with each other. The Enchanted Forest was a dangerous place, and the thought of Henry being left in the middle of nowhere alone and scared was enough to make Regina’s insides twist violently. She couldn’t let that happen, she couldn’t be _responsible_ for something like that.

“Back? Back _where?_ ” Emma demanded, but when her eyes caught Regina’s, the realization seemed to hit her. “Oh you’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

“I very much wish that I was,” Regina told her, taking a sharp right around the corner so quickly that it nearly made Emma fall against her. The Sherriff immediately held onto the grab handle though, and Regina found herself thankful for the woman’s reflexes. If Emma had slammed into her, it probably would have made her veer off the road. After a quick look in the rearview mirror, seeing the cloud grow ever nearer, Regina swallowed hard. She didn’t know if they were going to make it in time.

“Can’t you stop it?” Emma demanded, waving her hand erratically towards the back of the vehicle. “It’s _your_ fucking curse, isn’t it? Just… make it go away!”

“Don’t you think if I could I would have done so already?!” Regina exclaimed loudly, the stress of the current situation causing her to snap at Emma unwarrantedly. It wasn’t as though Emma knew anything about magic, nor about the curse itself, but Regina didn’t want to get faulted for something she had no control over at the moment. “I didn’t create the curse, I merely enacted it. I don’t know what that is, nor how to stop it! And I can’t _do_ anything about it because magic doesn’t exist here; I’m as helpless as you are!”

“Why the hell would you cast something without knowing all the details? _Jesus,_ Regina! It could be some kind of goddamn failsafe and just end up _killing_ us all!” Emma shouted, the prospect of that scenario scaring her senseless. Despite her anger towards Regina however, her hand was gripping the Mayor’s thigh tightly, as though she were the only thing able to ground her throughout this insanity.

Regina wished she could provide her with the sense of comfort she so desperately needed, yet all she could think about was Henry and her own fear about what could happen if that cloud really did send them back. So instead she snapped at Emma, “The curse was never supposed to break, there was never supposed to be any ‘Savior’, so why on earth would I _ever_ think to be concerned about what would happen afterwards?!”

“So what, you want me to _apologize_ for loving you now?” Emma shouted, apparently drawing the conclusion that Regina blamed her for the curse breaking and the slew of unfortunate events that happened after, just because she was the Savior. “Because if you weren’t driving this damn car I swear to god I would punch you in the fucking _face_ for that shit.”

“For Christ’s sake, Emma, I’m _not_ blaming you!” Regina exclaimed, taking a sharp left around the next corner that caused Emma to slam into the passenger side door. Perhaps they should have worn seatbelts, but it would have wasted precious time. As Emma tried to resituate herself, Regina continued, “If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine!”

“Damn right it’s your—!” But Emma cut herself off, her face noticeably paling as she looked behind them. The cloud was catching up to them rather quickly and now houses a handful of streets back from them were being enveloped in its wake. “Fuck, _drive!_ ” she screamed, causing Regina to press harder on the gas pedal in an instant.

They got to the school within minutes and before Regina slammed on the brakes she instinctively held her hand out in front of Emma, acting as a quasi-seatbelt so that the woman didn’t end up slamming into the dashboard. They scrambled out of the car as soon as they were able, but they both knew it was going to be too late. The cloud was descending on them now, just a block away from changing everything, and Regina stood frozen in the middle of the street, unable to do anything else but stare at it as drew nearer.

“Regina!” Emma shrieked, knowing there really was nothing they could do at this point. It would envelop them within moments, and so the blonde seemed to react on instinct, pulling Regina into her arms in a protective gesture.

Suddenly, everything went dark.

**TBC…**


	2. Broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to let you all know that I have finally mapped out my notes for this entire story, and I can promise you, without a doubt, that the pain I’m putting you through _will_ be worth it in the end, lol. It’s just gonna take a little while to get there. So I do apologize for crushing your hearts into dust, but nothing worth having ever comes easy, right? :P

**CHAPTER TWO  
Broken**

When Regina looked up, she expected to see the lush woodlands of the Enchanted Forest. Instead all she saw was the paved roads of Storybrooke, the area surrounding the two women completely unchanged. The purple cloud had dissipated, leaving confusion in its wake as a slew of people began to exit the buildings they had cowered in, looking around as though they couldn’t fathom what had just happened. Regina couldn’t either.

If the magic hadn’t transported them back, then what _had_ it done?

“We’re alive,” Emma breathed, apparently having convinced herself that the cloud _was_ some sort of failsafe meant to kill them all. Regina had never believed it to be a death trap and she felt terribly guilty, as she should have taken a moment to ease Emma’s worries. The blonde pulled away from Regina, the contact immediately becoming missed by the woman who feared she would never have it again. “So what the _hell_ just happened?”

“I really don’t know,” Regina answered, as it was the honest truth. She had theories of course, but now was not the time to discuss them. Without thought she grabbed Emma’s hand, weaving their fingers together as she told her hurriedly, “And it doesn’t matter. First we need to be certain that Henry’s alright. Because if he—!” Regina’s voice broke, her expression masking in fear. Although the cloud hadn’t affected them, there wasn’t a guarantee that everyone else in town remained unscathed by its presence, and the thought that something could have happened to their son terrified her to her very core.

The same realization seemed to hit Emma rather quickly, and although Regina had begun pulling her by the hand towards the school, suddenly she was the one rushing in front, her boots giving her a speed advantage over the heels Regina wore. However the moment they barreled through the double doors of the school, they were instantly halted by a child’s scream of terror.

Unfortunately, it had been Regina’s presence that had caused it. 

A little girl who couldn’t have been more than eight years old stood in the middle of the hallway, pointing directly at Regina with an expression of pure terror, as though she were the very thing nightmares were made of. “It’s the Queen!” she shrieked, causing the rest of her class that surrounded her to turn towards the two women in the threshold of the entranceway.

The teacher, who had no doubt escorted his students out of the classroom after the cloud had dissipated, noticeably paled at the sight of the woman before them. “Everyone, get back inside!” he ushered, herding the students like cattle back from whence they came. “ _Quickly!_ ” The children responded immediately, looking terrified beyond measure that they had come just mere paces away from the woman who had cursed them all. 

When once Regina would have rejoiced in the fear she instilled, now it only stood to make her heart ache as she watched the emotions play out on Emma’s face at the response her lover’s mere presence elicited from people. Within moments, Emma pulled her hand from Regina’s grasp as though she had been burned, turning to face her with a mixed expression of disbelief and disgust. It made Regina feel about an inch tall.

Them, the _peasants,_ they had never really mattered. But Emma? Her opinion of Regina meant the world.

“You need to leave,” Emma told her fiercely, realizing it could only get worse from here once others were made aware of Regina’s presence. But for the brunette, people’s reactions paled in comparison to what they had come here for.

“I’m not leaving until I know—!”

“I’ll make sure Henry’s okay, alright?” Emma exclaimed, pushing on Regina’s arm to try to guide her towards the exit. “But for fuck’s sake, Regina, if _this_ is the reaction people have when they see you, there are going to be some really pissed off, _scared_ people who probably want your head and I can’t—Jesus, I _can’t_ deal with that right now on top of everything. Just _go home!_ ”

Although that was probably true, Regina still had no intention of leaving solely for her own safety. Some things mattered more. “Emma, I’m not—!”

“This isn’t a discussion!” Emma shouted, the force of her words actually making Regina back up a few paces. “Everyone in this town just got mind-fucked in a pretty bad way, and I’m not about to let you make it worse by terrifying everyone and their fucking mother just by _existing_ near them! It’ll cause riots and that’s the _last_ thing any of us need, alright? Now turn the _hell_ around and get yourself somewhere safe until I can figure out a way to deal with… fuck, _everything._ Okay? I swear, I’ll call you the second I have Henry, but I just… I _can’t_ —!”

Emma’s voice cracked, the strength she was so desperately trying to hold on to throughout all of this madness beginning to fall away. She was trying, as best she could, to handle everything that was going on, but her eyes shone with helplessness at how utterly lost she felt in a world she had thought she knew. Now that she had taken a moment’s pause it seemed the reality of the situation was crushing her, and the last thing Regina wanted to do was further her pain. She owed her that much and besides, the only other person in this world that Regina really trusted to keep Henry safe was Emma. It wasn’t preferable, not by any means, but Emma was right in believing her presence would do far more damage than good at this point in time.

“You have fifteen minutes,” Regina told her, the words hard to muster as she had never really backed down from anything before. “That gives you more than enough time. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume something’s happened and I’ll tear this town apart trying to find him. Do you understand me?”

Emma didn’t argue her threat to destroy everything in her wake should something have gone wrong, as she no doubt felt that she would do the same thing. Instead she nodded wordlessly before turning away from the Mayor, sprinting down the hallway towards Henry’s classroom. 

Regina watched her go, heart pounding in her chest as she knew that should Emma find Henry, she would also find Snow with him. It was something Emma hadn’t seemed to process yet and Regina didn’t want to be the one to mention it, as it would probably only further her sense of panic. It furthered Regina’s as well, since the _last_ thing she wanted was to leave Emma with the woman who would undoubtedly waste no time trying to turn her daughter against her. Snow would never condone Emma’s feelings for her, not after everything that had happened between them.

But Henry had and would _always_ come first, so Regina reluctantly left the premises after a moment’s pause. All she could do now was hope that her son was alright, for she didn’t know what she would do should the worst have happened.

[x]

When Emma was a little girl, the only comfort that served her in times of loneliness was her vivid imagination. One of her favorite things was fairytales, as they gave her hope that one day she would be saved from the horrors that her childhood entailed. But as she grew older, Emma found herself wishing more for the strength of the heroes than the optimism of the damsels. It took many years for her to accept that no one was going to come rescue her, so she hardened herself and became a person that would never need to rely on anyone else for happiness, as she was sure no one would ever really care enough to give it to her anyway.

Now, however, as everyone in town looked at her as though she was the next coming of the freaking _messiah_ , Emma realized she wanted nothing more than for someone to come rescue her from the insanity her life had become. 

Emma had barricaded herself in her bedroom, unable to deal with Mary Margaret’s smothering and Henry’s insistence on knowing the details of how the curse had broken. Emma didn’t have the heart to tell him that things between her and Regina were probably fucked beyond repair, as he looked so hopeful for their happily ever after and the family that they would never become. What made it worse, however, was that Henry’s words had reminded Mary Margaret of her relationship with Regina, which caused a solid ten minutes of motherly concern that sounded more like a goddamn lecture than anything else; as if, after everything, she even had the _right_ to comment on her life choices. 

It was too much. It felt like everything was coming at her from all sides and as Mary Margaret tentatively knocked on the bedroom door, informing Emma that her _father_ was here and would like to see her, Emma contemplated jumping out the damn window to try to escape this kind of mind-numbing suffocation. 

After telling Mary Margaret that she just needed some space right now – a request that sounded more like an frantic demand because of the way it came out – Emma tried to ignore the muffled sounds of disappointment on the other side of the door as she sat on the floor near the bottom of her bed, knees pulled up to her chin as she stared at the text message she had just gotten. It was from Regina.

Emma hadn’t spoken to her after her hasty assurance that Henry was alright and that she was taking him back to her apartment, and Regina had enough sense to give her the space she needed for a few hours to try to deal with everything that had gone on. Patience, however, was not exactly Regina’s strong suit and finally there were five words taunting Emma on the screen of her phone, presenting her with another thing she didn’t know if she’d ever have the strength to deal with.

“We need to talk. Please.”

No. _Fuck_ no.

There was a part of her – a very large part of her – that was still hoping that this was all just some kind of horrifyingly vivid dream. Yesterday everything was normal and yet suddenly today, _today_ Emma felt like she had been repeatedly smacked in the head with a two-by-four over the revelation that she had Snow White and Prince-Freaking-Charming as her parents, and that Regina… _Regina_ — God, no, she didn’t even want to _think_ about Regina. Not right now, and probably not ever. It made her throat close up and her eyes bristle over with fresh tears, forcing her to feel far more than she was emotionally stable enough for. Yet no matter how many times Emma tried to ignore the truth, it was still there; taunting her, destroying her.

 _Love._

She had known better, hadn’t she? But maybe this kind of pain was just what her idiocy deserved. Emma had fallen in love with a woman that didn’t really exist. Regina, _her_ Regina… she wasn’t real. It had all been a lie. Everything, all of it; just some fabricated bullshit to fit the Queen’s intricate façade.

It fucking killed her inside.

Feeling the sting of betrayal pierce her heart once more, Emma quickly deleted the message, foolishly hoping that ignoring the problem would cause it to cease to exist. Her emotions, however, did not follow the path of her mind, and as Emma placed the phone down on the floor, trying to think of anything other than the woman who had cut her so deeply, a singular tear slipped down her cheek, reminding her that the façades she so often immersed herself in were nothing without Regina there.

Another tentative knock came from the door. It was ignored, Emma furiously brushing the proof of her sorrow from her face as though it sickened her to feel emotion for someone who had proven they didn’t deserve it.

The knock was repeated. “Emma?” came the small voice of her son, its volume suppressed by his uncertainty.

Emma closed her eyes, trying to gather up what was left of her strength so that Henry wouldn’t see how broken she had become. He believed she was some sort of superhero, able to take on the world and conquer anything, and since everything she had ever known had shattered before her in the span of a day, the last thing Emma wanted to do was destroy her son’s image of her as well. She knew how horrible it felt, to believe in something so strongly, only to see it was complete bullshit in the end.

After taking a shuddered inhale of breath, Emma forced herself to answer, “Yeah, kid?” Her voice broke the words in half and she winced, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

The hesitancy before his question indicated that he probably had. “Can I come in…?”

Picking herself up off the floor, Emma swallowed hard, hoping she looked far more put together than she felt. Running her fingers through her tussled hair a few times, Emma responded with, “Sure,” trying to make it sound light and easy, as though nothing in the world had changed; like everything was still _normal._

The lie didn’t even sound close to convincing.

Still, Henry opened the door. Peeking his head in, he took in the sight of his birthmother, giving her a small, reassuring smile. “Hi,” was all he said in greeting, apparently unsure how to proceed now that Emma had let him in. As he was most likely around to witness her blatant refusal of both Mary Margaret and David’s requests, the allowance was probably very unexpected for him. But Henry was different; he was the one thing, throughout all of this, that had remained unchanged.

Emma quirked her lips upwards in response, though it seemed a little forced. “Hey.” Nodding her head to indicate the world outside her bedroom door, Emma asked, “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Henry answered, moving more into the room so he could close the door behind him. “Grandma and Grandpa are talking in their room. Or kissing, I don’t know. There were noises.” He made a face and it was mirrored by Emma, finding anything sexual to do with Mary Margaret really strange now, as she was no longer her friend and roommate, but her—

Emma internally scowled. She still couldn’t find it within herself to say the word in her head, let alone out loud. It was all too screwed up a concept, and even when she could momentarily find that small part within that was able to accept it, it only stood to make her really, _really_ bitter. The last thing she wanted to do right now was even _think_ about the family that had abandoned her. She had enough to deal with as it was.

Still, she didn’t want to have her kid scarred for life just because her parents’ twenty eight year separation left them with an overactive libido, so she quickly assured Henry, “They’re probably just talking. They haven’t seen each other for a really long time. At least, not as…” Emma shrugged haplessly, unable to explain the quasi-duel lives everyone in the town now had. “Whatever. You know.”

Henry nodded, understanding. He scrunched up his face in thought as he looked up at her, and Emma wished it didn’t feel as dissecting as it did. After a few long moments, Henry looked her in the eye and told her, “I know you’re mad at my mom.”

Distress masked over Emma’s face in the span of a second, unable to hide how the mention of Regina affected her. “Henry…” she tried, not wanting to have this conversation with him. Especially not right now.

Henry, however, wouldn’t let her finish. “I know she lies,” he told her. “I know she’s done bad things, but that was when she was evil. Now she’s not, cause she loves you. You saved her, Emma, like you were supposed to. The curse wouldn’t have broken if you didn’t.” 

It was hard, trying to keep composed throughout this entire interaction. Any mention of Regina made Emma’s throat constrict so tightly that it felt as though she were suffocating. And yet still, the feeling paled in comparison to the agony of her heart breaking in half. It was that emotion which caused Emma’s eyes to swim with fresh tears, finding herself unable to hold them back despite how hard she tried. She was far too broken for this conversation right now, and the last thing she wanted was Henry witnessing what his adoptive mother had done to her.

Turning away from him, Emma chose to stand over by her bedroom window, looking out at the world that had changed so drastically within a matter of hours. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” she told him after a few seconds, the pause enabling her to suppress the onslaught of emotions that had been threatening to consume her. At least, for the moment. Emma shook her head as she ran her fingers through her hair, trying to dismiss the heaviness of the topic. “There’s a lot going on right now, kid; more than just the stuff between me and your mom. It’s gonna take me a little bit to process it all, you know? Maybe we should talk about this later.”

Her voice was strong, steady; much more assured than she actually felt. Emma would almost be impressed with herself for being able to sound so put together, if not for the fact she knew Henry could see right through it.

The kid didn’t say anything in response. Instead he moved from behind her, enveloping Emma’s waist in a tight hug. Emma felt her throat tighten again but swallowed it, allowing her hand to rest protectively against his head. She wished he couldn’t see how badly this had affected her, but he had always been far more intuitive than they gave him credit for.

“Don’t worry,” Henry assured her softly, his fingers holding tight to the fabric of Emma’s tank top. “True Love means always having a happy ending. You won’t be sad for long.”

Something inside Emma broke at her son’s words and she had to bite her bottom lip to stifle a sob. Her vision blurred and she held onto him tighter, simultaneously wishing that she had the kind of optimism that he did, as well as being terribly saddened that, at the end of the day, Henry was sure to be disappointed by their relationship’s failure. Maybe Regina had been right all along; maybe they shouldn’t have even started this, because it was going to tear Henry apart once he realized that there really was no fixing what had been broken. 

The sound of the phone ringing cut through the emotional moment, but only enough to make Emma want to crush the damn thing beneath her boot so that she would never have to hear that stupid ringtone ever again. _I knew you were trouble when you walked in…_

It was Regina.

Henry knew it too and he was off of her in a flash, running to grab Emma’s phone before she could, as he knew she wouldn’t answer it if she got to it first. “Henry, don’t—!” she tried, but it was of no use. Henry wanted them to talk and he was going to make sure they did. 

“Hi mom!” he answered victoriously, quickly backing away from Emma as she tried to make a swipe for the phone. He nearly tripped over her pile of laundry in the process. “Yeah, she’s right here, hold on,” he said after a moment, which made Emma shoot him a dangerous look that was ignored. Instead he just held out the phone to her, this innocent look plastered on his face that he knew Emma could see right through. “She wants to talk to you.”

Emma’s eyes flashed. “You’re grounded,” she muttered furiously as she yanked the phone from his grasp. She pointed towards the door, silently demanding privacy for the situation he had forced her into her against her will. Henry shot her a shit-eating grin before turning to leave, apparently proud of his little stunt. Emma was going to have to have a serious conversation with him later, because this really _wasn’t_ funny. She couldn’t fucking handle this right now.

After the door closed behind Henry’s retreating form, Emma inhaled an unsteady breath, trying to gather her composure enough to at least dismiss the woman on the other line. She could just hang up on her, but knowing Regina that would only provoke her to do something stupid like _come over._ That was the last thing Emma wanted.

Putting the phone up to her ear, Emma firmly informed her, “Regina, I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“I know that, I just…” Regina trailed off for a moment, sounding as though she were gathering the courage to say what she needed to, in fear of what the response would be. When she finally did, the words came out rather broken and small. “Emma, I… I need you.”

There was something off in Regina’s tone. The plea wasn’t uttered out of a love lost, but rather with an air of foreboding distress. Sensing that something was terribly wrong, Emma pushed her anger towards the woman aside for a moment, her instincts taking over at the sound of Regina’s fear. “What is it?” Emma asked, clutching the phone tighter to her ear as a sense of panic filled the pit of her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

All that could be heard for a moment was the sound of Regina’s breathing, and a faint shuffling in the background as she moved from one place to another. “Do you remember telling me that there would be people who would seek to have my head?” Emma’s stomach dropped to the ground before Regina even finished with, “Well, it seems they’ve come for it much earlier than I expected. They’ve… there is a mob outside my house right now. They haven’t tried to break down my door yet, but once they do, I… I honestly don’t think it’ll take very long.”

Emma was already halfway out of her bedroom door once Regina had finished her explanation, her heart pounding in her chest at the thought of an angry mob tearing the woman apart. “Stay where you are,” she told her as she grabbed her gun out of the locked box it was kept in, holstering it within seconds. “I’m coming. If they get in, _hide._ Do you hear me?” 

After Regina murmured an affirmative, Emma quickly hung up the phone before shoving it into her back pocket. Henry was already running towards her from his previous place on the couch, knowing immediately that something was wrong by the shift in tone. “What’s going on?” he asked, sounding just as frantic as she felt. His eyes were wide, frightened. “Is my mom okay??”

“She’s fine. Everything will be fine, I promise,” Emma hastily assured him as she threw on her coat. Grabbing her keys from off the island counter she told him, “Just stay here, okay? I’ll be back soon.” Henry tried to protest, but it was cut off with a firm, “ _Do as I say!_ ” before she fled from her apartment, slamming the door behind her.

As Emma hurriedly got into her car, she desperately tried to suppress the fear that was creeping up her esophagus, threatening to make her violently ill. No matter what she might feel about Regina, the _last_ thing she wanted was for her to get hurt, and it frightened Emma to realize that if the entire town started to believe that the Queen should be executed, there really might not be anything she could do to stop it.

**TBC…**


	3. Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve gotten some questions on Tumblr as to when updates will be, and right now the plan is to update every Wednesday. When I find more free time to write however, I will be shooting for twice a week. Thank you again for all the reviews/kudos, you guys are awesome!

**CHAPTER THREE  
Magic**

It had been a long time since Regina had found herself truly frightened.

Her mother, of course, was always able to terrify her with ease. But after Cora had been pushed through the looking glass, there had been no one left to challenge her. It was a breath of fresh air that Regina hadn’t known she had been missing until it was allotted her, and the feeling of freedom it gave her – to live without fear, without bounds – was unmatched in its comfort. That wasn’t to say that people didn’t _try_ to challenge her relentless tyranny as Queen, as there were many that sought to sever her head from her body or burn the flesh from her bones, but there was no one powerful enough to do so. Regina had magic on her side, something that served both as a weapon and as protection, and with it she knew no fear.

Now, however, the comfort magic had allotted her was gone, and Regina was left cowering in her house, actually afraid that these… these _peasants_ would tear her limb from limb. It was a testament, truly, to how far she had fallen.

Why on _earth_ didn’t she think to keep a gun in the house?

But even as Regina asked herself that question, she knew the answer: Henry. Although outside of not wishing to put him in harm’s way, there was also the fact that she had previously held the belief that the curse would never break. How foolish she’d been, to have underestimated the power that Emma held within her. Although in the end, it paled in comparison to how naïve Regina was, to have hoped, even for a moment, that True Love would prevail above all else.

And perhaps it had, in a sense. It prevailed over the curse, but that, it seemed, was where it’s graces ended; for Regina was now left alone, powerless, and feeling emptier than she had even before she cast this worthless curse. She had wanted her happy ending, yes, but what was worse was that she had found it, only to have it ripped away the second she realized its importance. _Her_ importance.

It was a shining example of poetic justice at its finest, and it made Regina want to set fire to damn near everything around her.

The shouting on her porch was beginning to grow louder, and Regina took a breath, chancing a look out her window. She couldn’t distinguish the words that were being said, but she was certain that they were probably arguing on the proper way to kill her. Either that or they were uncertain whether the curse breaking had brought her magic back or not, and didn’t want to opt for a full-frontal assault if it would result in casualties.

_If only._

It wasn’t as though Regina hadn’t _tried._ The moment she realized a mob was gathering outside of her house, she had tried with every ounce of her strength to conjure a protection ward, but reaching for something that wasn’t even remotely there did nothing but frustrate her to the point of smashing one of her crystal vases. Even trying something simpler yielded no results, and it made Regina deflate rather substantially, to realize that her suspicions about the magical cloud had been completely false. When it didn’t take them back to the Enchanted Forest, Regina was certain that it had at least restored magic to the town.

Of all the times to be proven wrong, this one was by far the worst. For the first time in a long while, Regina was completely helpless, and if she were to be honest, she didn’t quite know what to do now that she was unable to protect herself.

So she had done the first thing she thought of: she called Emma.

A part of her feared the woman wouldn’t even come. But perhaps that was stupid, for even after everything, one thing was still undeniably true; Emma _did_ love her. After all, the curse wouldn’t have broken if she did not. Still, it served as a small comfort, as Regina was certain that there was no coming back from this. Emma felt thoroughly betrayed, and it made Regina’s chest ache to realize that she would always live with half a heart, as the part that resided within Emma was probably never coming back. 

A loud _crash_ echoed from downstairs and Regina’s heart leapt in her throat as she hurriedly looked out the window once more. Apparently a decision had been made and it wasn’t in her favor. 

They had broken down her door. 

Regina firmly straightened the hem of her blouse as she inhaled a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. If Emma didn’t get there in time, the _last_ thing Regina was going to do was die an undignified death. She was their goddamn _Queen_ , and if they wished to revolt against her than so be it, but she was _not_ about to do anything shameful like cower in a corner or beg for her life. That was not who she was, despite whatever promises she had previously made to Emma, because if nothing else, at the end of the day, Regina Mills still had her pride.

So with that thought the brunette turned, striding out of her room with as much confidence as she could muster, set on meeting her her attackers that were gathering in the foyer. However, the collective cries of, “There she is!” and “Get her!” as Regina reached the top of her stairs didn’t even register with her, for it was that moment that Emma chose to come charging through the threshold at full speed.

Always the hero, even at the end of the day.

“Hey! _Hey!_ ” Emma screamed, trying to get the attention off of Regina and onto herself. Unfortunately, she was ignored. Regina stiffened as a wave of people began ascending the stairs, trying to fight her natural instinct to flee. But she was ever so much the Queen as she held her ground, at least, that was until Emma raised her gun above her head, firing a warning shot.

Everyone, including Regina, hit the ground in an instant, Emma having not bothered to look at where the hell she was shooting. The beautiful chandelier that decorated Regina’s entranceway shattered, shards of glass raining down upon the unsuspecting mob. They covered their heads with their hands, trying to avoid being hit by the debris as they scattered away from the affected area. 

“ _Miss Swan!_ ” Regina shrieked once she had gotten her bearings, out of force of habit more than anything else. Emma froze, eyes wide and her expression plastered with guilt as she looked up at Regina’s furious expression.

“…That was expensive, wasn’t it?”

Regina’s eyes flashed as she picked herself up off the ground, brushing off her pantsuit in an attempt to look more dignified after such a barbaric attempt at a rescue scenario. She didn’t even dignify Emma’s question with an answer, for Emma already _knew_ that it was, but it didn’t seem to matter anyway, for everyone else seemed to be coming back to reality as well. And _their_ reality held quite a lot of anger and spite for the woman at the top of the stairs.

Emma seemed to realize this and made a beeline through the crowd, pushing people out of her way until she stood between them and Regina about halfway up the stairs. People were starting to shout again, but both the acoustics in the room and her current position allowed Emma’s voice to reign over all of them. “Alright, that’s _enough!_ ” she furiously exclaimed, the muscles in her arms becoming more predominant as her entire body went into a defensive stance. 

Regina tried like hell not to stare, as there were clearly more pressing matters at the moment. Still, her gaze lingered there for a little too long before getting pulled back into reality by Emma’s continuance of, “I don’t give a shit where you guys are from, but you’re in _my_ world now, and over here we don’t form goddamn _lynch mobs!_ Now back the _hell_ up!”

Some did immediately. However, there were others that continued to stand their ground.

“Oh, how terribly _touching,_ ” one older man drawled, looking almost amused by Emma’s show of heroism. Taka Aryeh, Regina believed his name was, though who he was before she had cursed him, she couldn’t remember. His hair was jet black and he had a scar covering his left eye, and although it jogged something in Regina’s memory, she could not place why he seemed so familiar. “I wonder, would you be so keen on protecting the Queen if she was not your lover?”

Emma bristled as some people in the crowd shouted their agreement of the man’s assumption of favoritism. “What Regina and I may or may not be to each other is irrelevant,” she snapped. “There are laws in this world and I’m not about to have you tear her apart on _my_ watch. I’m the law around here and if you don’t like it, then by all means, get the _hell_ out of my town. No one’s stopping you.”

“She stole our lives; she took us from our _homes!_ ” came a voice from the back, which Regina couldn’t place throughout the masses. However there were murmured, angry agreements that quickly followed. “We deserve retribution!”

“That doesn’t give you, _any_ of you, the right to try to kill her!” 

“Then what the hell are you plannin’ to do about it, sister?” Leroy piped up, stepping through the crowd so he could be seen. Even from where Regina was standing, now directly behind Emma as she had descended the stairs, she could smell the liquor curling off of him like smoke. “Because so far I’m not seein’ her in handcuffs or behind bars, and yet you’re preachin’ about the _law?_ ”

“Excuse me for being a little fucking preoccupied,” Emma snapped, apparently not intending to keep this professional in the slightest. Then again, she did look to be at about her wit’s end. She exuded what strength she had left, but Regina knew more of Emma Swan than anyone else, and could easily see how broken she was behind the mask she wore so diligently.

The guilt from being the one who had caused it sought to tear Regina’s heart in half, and she instinctively reached out for her, lightly clasping her hand around Emma’s forearm. The woman moved away from her without even so much as a thought, and Regina’s stomach sank, realizing that their instincts no longer coincided. Emma did not want to be that close to her.

“You ignorant girl,” King George reprimanded her, stepping to the forefront. As his Storybrooke counterpart was a District Attorney, Regina was not surprised by his grievances. “There is no justice system in this world capable of dealing with this kind of situation. What do you plan on telling the state _judge_ of her crimes? If the rumors are true, then your feelings for this… _witch,_ ” he nearly spat out the word, “are clouding your judgment. We do not need someone like that in the Sherriff’s office.”

“Then run against me in the next election,” Emma firmly responded, holding her ground. “But for now, _I’m_ the Sherriff, and I say Regina deserves a fair trial.”

Regina’s eyebrows rose. “You’re not seriously considering _arresting_ me, are you?” she asked, as though the idea was unfathomable. King George had been right in that aspect; there _was_ no justice system in this world to deal with her crimes. Not that she wished to be executed either, but there were other options that could suffice. Banishment, for example. So long as she was still allowed access to her son, and to… and to Emma, Regina could live with that.

Although she knew the latter hope was her merely grasping at straws.

“I’m sorry, do you _want_ to get lynched today?” Emma snapped, effectively silencing Regina in an instant because no, she really did not. In the end, her solution _was_ far better than the alternative, no matter how much Regina may dislike it. “Just be quiet and let me handle this.”

“The old man is right,” Taka spoke up, his eyes gleaming with challenge. King George, however, noticeable bristled at being referred to as ‘old’. “Some silly little girl with a _crush_ is not fit to make decisions on behalf of this town. Now I am _dreadfully_ sorry to be the one to enlighten you, Sherriff, but look around you.” The man smiled cruelly as he motioned to the mob behind him. “There are dozens of us and one of you. I’d say the odds aren’t exactly in your favor, wouldn’t you?”

Emma’s eyes flashed. “Is that a threat?”

“Yes, I do believe it is,” Taka responded, stepping forward. His boldness seemed to illicit it in others, for nearly half the group came up behind him, ready to advance if their newfound leader said the word. “And quite frankly, that fact that you even had to question it only gives further proof to your complete incompetence.”

“Nah, I just wanted to make sure,” Emma told him with a sneer, cocking her gun before pointing it at one of the man’s legs just as he and the mob began to advance. “You take one more step and I’ll blow your kneecap off,” she told him point blank, causing Taka to come to a halt just mere paces before them. “Because to get to Regina you have to come through me, and I’m not exactly the world’s nicest person when I’m feeling threatened. Understand me?”

Taka laughed. It sounded mocking and cruel. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Why? Because I’m the _Savior?_ ” Emma spat, as though the title was something disgusting to her. “ _Wrong._ The world isn’t black and white, and I sure as hell am not either. I might be too good a person to kill you outright, but I’m not opposed to causing some damage. You’re threatening my _family._ You wanna see what that does to a person? Go ahead and find out.”

Although Regina was certain that the word ‘family’ when referring to her was nothing more than an unconscious slip on Emma’s part, it still filled her with an incomprehensible sense of warmth and acceptance. However, the feeling was short lasting. 

Taka opened his mouth, fury etched on his face at being so blatantly challenged, yet instead of words, a loud, animalistic roar fell from his lips. Regina’s eyes widened as his form shifted in an instant and instead of an angry man standing before them, a dark lion emerged from the ashes of Taka’s former self. Teeth bared and muscles poised, he immediately lunged towards the two women.

Regina reacted on instinct.

“Emma!” she shouted, throwing herself in front of the woman so violently that they both landed in a heap on the stairs. Regina quickly shielded Emma’s body with her own, yet instead of feeling sharp teeth sink into her flesh as she had expected, something inside of her sparked to life.

Regina felt her magic react within her so suddenly that the intensity of its power nearly suffocated her, pushing the breath from her lungs as a protection ward shot from her body like an arrow. There were screams from the mob as it slammed into the lion so forcefully that it threw the animal across the foyer, causing it to collide with the far wall. A pathetic sounding whimper escaped the creature’s mouth as the impact was made, but when it fell to the ground, its unconscious, massive body shifted to become the form of the man it once was.

The house broke out into chaos.

Frightened of Regina’s magic, the mob scattered from the house like ants. Pushing, shoving, and screaming, they each fought to be the first one out the door, once more fearing their Queen’s uncontestable wrath, should it suddenly be turned towards them. Their collective panic only furthered the pandemonium as the magic in the air wrapped around each of them, forcing them to become what they once were. 

A loud _crash_ echoed through the house as suddenly a twelve foot ogre shifted from within the doorway, crushing the threshold to nothing as plaster rained down upon his head. Regina stared at the scene wide-eyed, not understanding what was happening in the slightest, yet knowing that if nothing else, she _had_ to keep the ward up in case any of the newly appearing creatures turned on them. Now that she felt the magic running through her veins, her instinctual abilities kicked in and she was easily able to control it. For how long though, Regina was unsure.

Emma’s grip on her arm was bruising as her breathing shallowed, unable to comprehend the situation even less than Regina. A collection of what the blonde had previously believed to be mythical creatures, mixed with a plethora of panicking humans, was still in the process of fleeing from the house. Regina wished she could tell Emma that it would be alright, but didn’t dare speak in fear that it might break her concentration. They couldn’t afford to have the ward fall, as it was the only thing protecting them during this madness.

Some of the creatures were reverting back to their human forms after only moments, but others were now roaming down Mifflin Street, causing more chaos on the unsuspecting town. Thankfully, everyone had now vacated the mayoral mansion, but the repercussions of what had happened there were sure to be disastrous. However, as Regina was certain that no one was planning to turn back around and attack them, she allowed the ward to dissipate before turning towards Emma, breathing heavily from the amount of effort it took to uphold it for that long. 

Emma didn’t meet her gaze. She was barely even blinking. The Sherriff just stared out the large hole that was once Regina’s doorway, seemingly struck into a near catatonic state. Regina creased her brow in concern, knowing that after everything else that had happened, this was probably far more than the woman could mentally handle. Regina tenderly touched her arm so as to not startle her, voice low as she questioned, “Emma…?”

Emma turned towards her, but she seemed to be looking _through_ her rather than at her. Regina momentarily feared that this madness might be the thing that finally broke her, but suddenly Emma rose to her feet. Regina watched as the woman wordlessly trudged into her study, not even bothering to spare the Mayor another glance. It was like she wasn’t even there.

Regina blinked, giving herself a moment’s hesitation to process the change before she too picked herself off the stairwell, following Emma into the other room. 

Regina was greeted with the sight of the Sherriff holding one of her most expensive bottles of whiskey to her lips, chugging the contents like she hoped to find sanity at the bottom of the glass. While the reaction was probably not out of the ordinary, considering the unorthodox nature of the situation, Regina still found herself cringing at the sight of Emma coughing on the contents for a moment, only to immediately bring the bottle back to her lips. She, clearly, had no desire to be competent throughout this ordeal. But dulling her senses did not in any way diminish the problem, so Regina asked, “You honestly believe this kind of reaction will _help?_ You’re the Sherriff, Emma. What use are you going to be to anyone _drunk?_ ” 

Her tone came off as terribly judgmental, and Emma slammed the now half-empty bottle on the desk before turning towards Regina, a dangerous look in her eye. “A character from my favorite Disney film just tried to _rip me apart,_ ” she hissed furiously. “Do you even _understand_ how much of a mind fuck that is?!”

Regina held up her hands in light surrender, realizing she shouldn’t have been so quick to chastise. She probably didn’t have a place to anymore anyway. Still, Regina tried to calm her with, “Look, I really do understand that this is a difficult situation for you to grasp, but—”

“A diff—a _difficult_ situation?!” Emma exclaimed, a disbelieving laugh bubbling from her throat. She stared at Regina like she had gone mental. “I think we’ve gone a little fucking far past a _difficult_ situation, don’t you? For fuck’s sake, Regina, _Simba’s uncle_ is lying unconscious in your goddamn entranceway, and I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to _know_ what the hell broke down your damn door!”

Regina tried to answer, but Emma continued her tirade as she furiously grasped for the bottle once more. “And the most screwed up part of it is, I don’t get a chance to even process any of this crap, do I? No. I have to fucking go out there and… and deal with everything that _you_ fucked up! This, all of this shit, is _your_ fault, Regina!” She waved the bottle at the Mayor erratically, some of the contents spilling out and staining the white carpet as Emma stumbled towards her, the rush of alcohol seemingly hitting her all at once. “You and your _stupid_ ass curse and Jesus, why—why the hell couldn’t you have been fucking _normal?!_ ”

The bottle was to her lips again, Emma’s shoulders slouching in defeat as she dealt with her problems in the unhealthiest way that she could find. “Why couldn’t I have just loved someone _normal?_ ” Emma murmured after she was finished with another swig, although the question seemed to be directed more towards herself than to the woman standing before her.

Regina watched Emma fall apart with a pained expression, for she knew that the woman had spoken truth when she placed the blame on her shoulders. This _was_ her fault. Regina wished, more than anything else, that she could find a way to rectify it so that its reality was no longer crushing the drunken woman in front of her, but there truly was nothing she could do at this point. The damage had already been done, and now they _both_ had to live with the consequences.

“Emma, I’m sor—”

“ _Don’t,_ ” Emma interrupted her, eyes ablaze as she cut Regina off mid-sentence. She placed the bottle back down on the desk, furiously pursing her lips for a moment as she ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s just… it’s _worthless,_ okay? So just don’t. I don’t want to fucking hear it.”

Regina tensed her jaw, trying to not allow the sorrow that she felt become reflected on her face. There was a long moment’s silence that followed, the tension in the room enveloping any hope for rationality. Still, Regina had to try. “Emma,” she began softly, tentatively. “What’s happened is going to cause a lot of people to panic. There’s going to be more riots if we don’t gain control over the situation—”

“We?” Emma interjected through a disbelieving laugh. “I’m sorry, did you just say _we?_ Newsflash, Regina; I’m pretty sure a whole of _no one_ is going to want you to be Mayor after this. You have no more authority.”

Regina bristled, offense coloring her face. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to allow this town, _my_ town, to just fall apart! Think whatever you want of me, Emma, but I actually _do_ care about Storybrooke.”

“Well that’s just _great,_ ” Emma slurred sarcastically. “Fucking damn peachy to know that you care enough about a _fake_ town to try to save it, but not enough to be honest in your goddamn relationship to save _us._ ”

It was a low blow and Regina felt it in her chest, twisting the invisible knife that this situation held within her heart. A dozen things came to mind to say in her defense, but none of them made it past Regina’s lips. She just stared at Emma, helplessly faced with a problem that held no plausible solution. Its inevitability was destructive and Regina knew that it was only a matter of time until it demolished everything that they were, and everything that they could have been to each other.

Emma shook her head, trying to push past the floodgates that she had opened. “You know what? Whatever,” she dismissed, beginning to cross the room towards Regina as she reached for the cuffs hanging off her belt. “You want me to do something to calm the people of this town, then _fine._ I’ll do something.”

“Emma, what are you— _Emma!_ ” Regina exclaimed as she was practically manhandled, the Sherriff having forced her to turn around as she positioned Regina’s hands behind her back. Though Regina didn’t struggle against her, Emma’s grip was tight and immobilizing. 

“You have the right to remain silent—”

“You’re _mirandizing_ me?” Regina fumed, feeling the cuffs click in place behind her wrists. Disbelief washed over her features, as she had believed Emma understood that there really was no court in this world that could try the kinds of crimes she had committed.

Emma continued on, ignoring her protests as she forcefully guided Regina towards the door. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney—”

“I know my goddamn rights!” Regina exclaimed, feeling thoroughly humiliated by this whole ordeal. If it were anyone else arresting her it wouldn’t be as bad, but as it was Emma who was doing this, it made Regina feel about an inch tall. The fact that she was in handcuffs, that Emma didn’t even trust her enough to come with her to the station willingly, spoke volumes about how much their relationship had deteriorated.

Still, Emma pushed on. In the end, she knew that if she didn’t finish, that it could become problematic from a legal standpoint later on. “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you…” Regina exhaled a hard breath as Emma continued reading her her rights, leading the detained woman towards her car. 

This most certainly was not going to end well.

**TBC…**


	4. Admissions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have mentioned this before, but this fic is a canon divergence, which means I have taken some liberties in regards to how the curse broke and kind of made it my own. So take what you know from canon and throw it out the window, because this does not follow what happened on the show. This will become clearer later on, especially in regards to what characters are there and how magic works or doesn’t work in this realm, but as I’ve had some people reference canon in reviews (on FF.net anyway), I figured I should let you guys know my intentions.

**CHAPTER FOUR  
Admissions**

Emma was pretty sure she was starting to get a migraine. Either that or she hadn’t drank _nearly_ enough today to counteract the massive hangover she had this morning. In an attempt to rectify that problem, Emma took a large sip of her coffee that she had unceremoniously dumped some Bailey’s in not an hour previously, fumbling with her keys in the other hand as she tried to unlock the door to the Sherriff’s station. Her phone was being cradled to her ear by her shoulder as she pushed the door open, trying like hell not to get outwardly frustrated at the person on the other line.

“Look, I— No, I… I get that we need to talk, David. It’s just—” Emma sighed heavily as she was interrupted once again, tearing her phone from her ear once she had gotten the door open. She really didn’t need this right now. Emma heard the muffled sounds of the man’s disappointment on the other line over the fact that she had clearly called for other reasons, before she took a deep breath and put the phone back up to her ear.

“—not trying to push you into anything, but your mother and I feel—”

“David!” Emma exclaimed, unable to keep her frustration under wraps any longer as she practically stomped down the narrow hallway. “I get it, okay? I do. But this town is going to hell and back right now, and I’m pretty damn sure that’s more important than family bonding time, alright? So can you just put this lifetime movie moment you wanna have on hold for two seconds and just _listen_ to me?”

When Emma walked into the holding area, a quick assessment of the singular cell informed her that Regina was already very much awake and already staring at her expectantly. As that was the very _last_ thing Emma wanted to deal with right now, she quickly crossed the room to open the door to her office.

“What’s going on?” David asked, concern coloring his voice by how overwhelmed Emma sounded. “Did something happen?”

Did something—Jesus, how could he not _know?_ Did he and Mary Margaret seriously spend all day in bed, clueless to the outside world? Nice to know where there priorities lied. 

Emma closed the door to her office behind her, exhaling an impatient sigh before flopping down in her desk chair. “Well if you wanna consider getting attacked by Scar – in lion form, no less – and then spending the rest of the day trying to make sure that no giants or griffons or _whatever the hell_ tore the town apart, as ‘something’, then sure, _something_ happened.”

 _That_ got David’s full attention. “ _What?_ ”

Emma ran her fingers through her hair, shaking her head momentarily before telling him. “Look it’s—I don’t know, _fine,_ I guess, right now. Everyone turned back eventually and there was actually very minimal damage. But by the time I got back from arresting Regina, Scar had already disappeared and—”

“Wait, you arrested _Regina?_ ” David asked, sounding genuinely surprised. There was a noticeable pause on the other line, making the conversation turn awkward as he hesitantly continued, “Not that I, ah… don’t _disagree_ with that decision, Emma, but I thought you two were—”

“We aren’t,” Emma told him firmly, but then felt her lip curl upwards in displeasure for a moment before she reluctantly amended with the truth, “Okay, we _were,_ but—you know, that isn’t the point. Half the town wants to rip her apart and she… I don’t know, _pissed me off,_ so I put her behind bars. I don’t—fuck, it doesn’t matter, I’ll deal with her later. But honestly right now I’m a little shorthanded, and I figured that since you were a… _hero_ , or something, back in… wherever it is that you’re from, that you could actually stand to help me out in case another epidemic of crazy breaks out. I can’t do everything myself and I don’t have a deputy, so I just—”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” David told her, thankfully relieving Emma from the worry that she might have to do something incredibly embarrassing like _beg._ She was entirely out of her element here and honestly, one person could only do so much. She really needed the help. “You can explain the rest to me when I get there.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Emma found herself sinking back into her chair as she replied, “Thank you, David.” 

She really had no idea who else to ask if he had turned her down. 

After Emma had said her goodbyes and hung up the phone, she exhaled a long, hard breath as she grabbed her cup of coffee. The amount of liquor she had dumped into it burned its way down her throat, promising a coming haze that would allow her to dull the rampant insanity that currently surrounded her life. 

Emma wasn’t so idiotic as to allow herself to get totally smashed, especially considering that she had a job to do, but it at least provided her with a ‘fuck it’ kind of attitude that God, she _really_ needed right now. If she started dwelling on everything again – her ‘parents’ and Regina and actual, fairytale curses that turned her entire world upside down – she’d probably have a complete mental breakdown and lock herself up in an asylum. Truthfully, right now, that idea actually held some appeal, as it would be so much easier than dealing with _this,_ but she had Henry to think about.

Regina was… Hell, Emma didn’t even know _what_ Regina was, but she found herself questioning how safe Henry would be if he stayed at the manor. Regina loved him, of course; that… well, Emma would never question _that,_ but the woman’s life was in danger right now, and the last thing Emma wanted to do was put Henry in harm’s way. She would never forgive herself if something happened to him.

And neither would Regina.

Emma exhaled a long sigh as her eyes momentarily flittered to the doorway that separated her from the brunette in the other room. Truth be told, there was a part of Emma that was kicking herself for even arresting Regina in the first place, not because the woman didn’t deserve it or need the protection it gave her, obviously, but because Emma had now managed to trap herself in the same building for eight plus hours a day with the one person she desperately did _not_ want to see. 

Still, the – albeit, slightly _drunken_ – decision had been made, and now Emma had to live with the consequences, whether she liked it or not. So as she rose from her seat, Emma grabbed the bag of takeout she had gotten from Granny’s on her way over to the station, figuring that at the end of the day, she still had to be the Sherriff, and that included responsibilities like actually feeding her current prisoner. She couldn’t let her personal feelings get involved in this, as it would only stand to make it so much harder on the both of them.

When Emma exited her office, she allowed her eyes to rest on the woman in the containment cell. Regina was situated on the cot in the far left, her expression composed and her hands folded neatly in her lap, as though she were waiting for a damn business meeting to begin instead of an arraignment. It irrationally aggravated Emma for a moment, how regal the woman managed to seem even at her worst of hours. Regina looked slightly disheveled, but otherwise there was no indication that she had just spent the night locked in a cage. It was as though her current surroundings didn’t even register with her as something to be concerned about.

Emma roughly thrust the bag through the metal bars without a word of acknowledgement other than the gruff statement of, “Here,” making a point to look anywhere but at the Mayor’s face while she said it. She didn’t like what she saw behind Regina’s eyes, as it made her feel things she really wasn’t ready to deal with yet.

Regina hesitated for a moment before rising from the cot, crossing the small space to stand before Emma on the other side of her confinements. “Thank you,” she said, her voice softer than normal as she took the bag from the Sherriff’s hand. The moment their fingers touched, Emma felt herself instinctively flinch before abruptly pulling herself away. Inwardly berating herself for showing Regina how much she had truly broken her, Emma scowled and walked over to the desk a few feet away.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she responded flatly, flopping down in the seat before mindlessly shuffling through the disorganized paperwork scattered all over the surface. “That really ‘unhealthy’ breakfast was supposed to be for me. I didn’t—” Emma hesitated for a moment before begrudgingly admitting, “I didn’t really even think you’d still be here.”

Not after what she had witnessed yesterday afternoon, anyway.

Regina’s brow furrowed. “You _do_ realize that you have the only key to this little cell, right?”

“And you _do_ realize that you have your magic back, don’t you?” Emma countered, her tone probably more hostile than it actually needed to be as she sharply looked up at her. “Couldn’t you just…” she waved her hand erratically, trying to make her point, “you know, _leave?_ ”

The bag crinkled in Regina’s hand as her grip noticeably tightened. “Contrary to what you might choose to believe, Emma, I don’t actually intend to betray your trust.” 

The blonde’s eyes narrowed, a retort beginning to form on her lips. Regina, however, did not give her time to voice it. “Regardless, your concern isn’t warranted. I cannot…” The sorceress exhaled a soft sigh as she admitted, “Magic is much different here; it seems I can no longer summon it with ease.”

“And you know this _because…?_ ” Emma drawled, though had already reached a viable conclusion in her mind. Shaking her head, she scowled as she turned back to her paperwork. “Jesus, Regina, all you ever fucking do is lie. I don’t even know why I bother asking you anything anymore.”

“I’m _not_ lying to you!” Regina exclaimed, forcefully enough for Emma to look back up at her. “I didn’t try to leave, I merely…” She disgruntledly motioned towards the cot in the far corner of the cell, as though she were embarrassed to admit that it was the thing that, above all else, actually bothered her about this situation. “That… ragged _thing_ does not provide much comfort. I was only trying to—”

“Pretty sure criminals don’t deserve much comfort, Regina,” Emma snapped, interrupting her before taking a long swig of her spiked coffee. Yeah, she really wasn’t drunk enough to deal with this right now. She should have just went back into her office after giving Regina her food, but Emma was sure that the paperwork she needed to book the woman was somewhere in this mess on the desk.

At least she hoped it was, otherwise she was torturing herself for no foreseeable reason.

Regina’s jaw tensed. “That’s what you think of me, then?” 

“That’s what you _are!_ ” Emma exclaimed, looking at her incredulously. How could Regina believe that she would see her as anything but? She was the actual embodiment of one of the oldest fairytale super-villains, for Christ’s sake. “You basically mind-raped everyone in this town, have single-handedly managed to create the longest list of abduction charges ever filed against one _damn_ person, and if what Henry’s book says is true, you—!” But Emma stopped herself mid-sentence, the words dying in her throat as all the color drained from her face.

Suddenly, what used to be just a story became far, _far_ too real.

Regina noticed the change immediately, her own face noticeably paling as she realized what it was that Emma had to have been thinking about. Gone was the façade of self-assurance that Regina had tried to hide behind all morning, and suddenly the woman Emma had left broken on her bedroom floor was once more laid out in front of her. “Emma, please,” she softly pleaded, her voice noticeably cracking from the forthcoming emotional strain. Her fingers wrapped around the bars, looking at Emma with desperation. “Don’t do this. Not right now. You’re not ready to—”

“You really did kill him… didn’t you?”

The question was barely even audible, the words being breathed out in horror as realization dawned on Emma so fiercely that it almost blinded her. Still, Regina heard it loud and clear. She swallowed hard, looking like she might fall apart on the spot.

“Emma…”

“ _Answer me!_ ” Emma shrieked, standing so abruptly from her seat that the chair toppled to the ground behind her with a loud crash. Her eyes were wild, _crazed,_ as she stared at the woman before her, a woman who she once thought she knew. It sickened her deeply to realize she really never had at all, because the Regina she knew, the Regina she fell in love with… she might be a lot of things, but she could _never…_

“Yes,” Regina breathed regrettably in answer, the singular word successfully managing to brutally rip the last shred of sanity from Emma’s mind so fast that it felt as though the reality of it would crush her very bones to dust.

Something within her abruptly crumbled.

The blonde suddenly felt her knees weaken, her stomach churning horribly as her vision blurred. Grasping for the side of the desk, Emma doubled over violently, only barely managing to situate herself over the trash can before spilling the contents of her stomach into it. She choked on the bile, her tears blurring the world around her as she tried, desperately, to once more convince herself that this was all some kind of bad dream; that she would wake up any minute now, safe in the arms of the woman who loved her, and nothing would have changed.

But everything had changed. The world was completely _fucked_ and Emma right along with it, and nothing would ever make it better. _Nothing._ The world as she knew it, the woman she loved, as she _thought_ she knew her, was gone… and they weren’t ever coming back.

Regina sounded just as broken as she was, and if Emma could find a moment to think clearly, it probably would have infuriated her, that Regina _dared_ to sound anything remotely close to human right then. “Emma, I swear to you, it wasn’t—!”

“ _Emma?!_ ”

Emma barely had time to register the unexpected voice before she was basically being cradled in a death grip from her position on the floor by far more arms than one person should have. Not that it mattered, in the long run. Emma still felt sick to her stomach, her arms holding the waste bucket tight to her chest as she tried desperately not to vomit anymore, as she was sure her stomach didn’t have anything left in it besides acid.

“What the hell have you done to her?!” Mary Margaret accused, the question being posed to what the blonde could only assume was Regina. Emma had no idea why the hell she was even there, as she only asked David to come, but she honestly didn’t really even care at that point. She was so wrapped up in the horror of Regina’s admission that she could barely even _breathe,_ let alone think.

“Just get me away from her,” Emma pleaded frantically, stumbling as David tried to help her to her feet. She couldn’t deal with this, she couldn’t deal with _any_ of this. The tears were flowing again, a reaction she had no hope of trying to suppress no matter how much she despised it. Emma choked back a sob, wishing she could run but knowing the strength in her legs would fail her if she tried.

Regina didn’t even acknowledge the existence of the other people in the room; instead she was desperately trying to plead to Emma, who was hearing none of it. “Emma, _please,_ just listen to me—!”

“I don’t want to hear _anything_ that you have to say!” Emma shouted, the words coming out choked and broken, yet fierce with the fury that resided within her heart over the loss of a friend and the woman who had seen to it that it had happened. “Nothing you could say could _ever_ justify what you did! You killed him, you _fucking—!_ ” But the words wouldn’t come anymore, another sob wracking her body as it pushed the breath from her lungs. David cradled her in his arms, like any father would, yet all the gesture managed to do was sicken Emma further.

“Charming, get Emma out of here,” Mary Margaret ordered, unclasping her hands from her daughter’s as she nodded at him encouragingly. It was strange, how not like herself she sounded, but Emma didn’t want to dwell on _that_ either. She didn’t want to think of Mary Margaret as her mother right then, just as much as she didn’t want to think of Regina as the Evil Queen, and yet still, the truth kept getting shoved down her throat so much and so fast that Emma was practically choking on it.

And as David quickly led her from the room, away from the woman who had managed to both complete and ruin her life in the same day, Emma idly found herself wishing that the feeling would suffocate her, as it had to be easier than all of this.

[x]

Regina had been behind bars before, but she had never felt so utterly trapped within their confinements until now. Her desperation for Emma not to leave her, not after _that_ , nearly consumed her whole and she tried with every ounce of strength she had in her to summon enough magic so she could escape that which separated her from the woman she had broken, but in the end nothing came. Her cheeks stained with fresh tears, she watched Charming pull Emma from the room, her frustration of being unable to do anything to rectify the pain she had caused boiling over so abruptly that an anguished cry fell past her lips, the flat of her hand slamming against the cold metal bars.

The sound echoed through the room, causing Snow, who still stood in front of her, to instinctively flinch. Once Emma had left her line of sight, Regina’s eyes fell on the woman who had caused her so much agony in her life, her gaze darkening with absolute loathing. “Get _out,_ ” she demanded dangerously through clenched teeth. She was going through enough; the last thing she needed was to see Snow’s gloating face as her pain practically ripped her apart inside. 

But Snow wasn’t gloating. In fact, she didn’t look pleased at all. Her face was torn between the sympathy any good person would feel for one in pain, and the anger that any mother would feel towards the one who had scorned her daughter so deeply.

“Why Emma?” Snow asked her after a long stretch of silence, a wordless battle of wills that had ended in her favor. She took a step towards Regina, an array of conflicting emotions passing over her face as she reiterated, “Why _my_ daughter? You must have known who she was, so why would you _ever_ –?”

Regina was rapidly rebuilding her walls, desperately trying to find enough strength within her to have this confrontation after the emotional turmoil she had just been subjected to. She scowled at Snow, for she found that it was the easiest emotion to reach at the moment. “Believe me, dear, I certainly never intended to fall in love with anyone spawned from _you_.” Regina’s grip tightened on the bar her fingers had furiously wrapped around, the pressure making her knuckles flash white. “She was never meant for anything more than my bed.”

A brief look of horror crossed Snow’s face as she no doubt was reminded that for her daughter and Regina to have been in a relationship, it meant that they would have slept with each other on numerous occasions. It seemed that was something Snow had previously made a point not to acknowledge and, unable to stop herself from causing the woman more distress, Regina smirked cruelly at her as she went on. “Which is an area she is _very_ talented in, by the way. You should be proud.”

Snow’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you _dare_ speak about my daughter like she’s some kind of—!” But the word never came, Snow unable to stomach hearing how demeaning it would sound out loud. She clenched her jaw, looking at Regina dangerously. “How can you stand there and claim you love her, yet—!”

“Do not presume to _ever_ know what it is I feel for Emma!” Regina shouted at her, her eyes darkening with anger at the word ‘claim’. The amount of raw emotion in her words seemed to give Snow pause, and after a moment her eyes widened of their own accord. 

Then she looked positively ill.

“Oh God,” she breathed, realization dawning on her. “What Henry said was true, isn’t it? About how the curse… how it—how it _ended?_ ” Regina tensed her jaw, yet said nothing; speaking about it would only stand to crumble her sanity as she would be reminded about just how much she had lost that day. Still, it seemed Snow didn’t need an answer; she could see it written all over Regina’s face.

Slumping against the wall, Snow exhaled a disbelieving breath. “I had… I thought he was just being hopeful. But I… I _never…_ ” Her eyes connected with Regina’s, looking for the first time, just about as helpless as Regina felt. “I thought Daniel…”

“So did I,” Regina said quietly. A fresh wave of sorrow washed over her, but within moments Regina had frantically pushed it to the side, once more masking her face in indifference. It was just easier. “Seems we are unable to choose our destiny, my dear, no matter how much we may wish to.”

Snow swallowed hard before pursing her lips, shaking her head almost violently as she tried to fervently deny that which was laid out before her. “No,” she told her, her voice coming out strong and unwavering with her decision. “ _No._ I will not have Emma tied to you in that way!”

“Do you honestly think you have a _choice?_ ” Regina countered harshly. “You know better than anyone that True Love isn’t something that just _goes away_ in time.”

Snow looked at her furiously, as though this was something Regina had actually _chose_ to have happen in her life. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways.”

Regina’s jaw slacked, absolutely horrified that Snow would even contemplate doing something like that. “You would do that? To your own _daughter?_ ” Regina asked incredulously, the fury within her beginning to rise up quite substantially. “Even if you could manage to find it in this realm, that potion will rip away everything that makes her _her,_ and I will _not_ allow you to violate her in such a way!”

“I know what the potion does!” Snow exclaimed loudly, taking a step towards Regina in challenge. “But loving you is going to destroy her, Regina! Look at what it’s already done, and this is just the _beginning!_ And you know, you have some nerve to actually stand here and preach about violating people when you did the same to everyone in our land, just to get back at _me!_ ”

“That doesn’t mean you should follow my fucking example!” Regina shrieked, slamming her hand against the bar once more, this time so hard that the vibration was felt throughout her entire body. “I won’t let you do this to her, Emma is _mine!_ ”

“She is _not_ yours, she’s her own damn _person,_ Regina!” Snow shouted back, her rage beginning to relentlessly match Regina’s. “She deserves to know that she has a choice! And I’m willing to bet, when given it, she wouldn’t choose _you._ ”

Those words, probably more than any other that Snow had ever muttered, pierced Regina’s heart so abruptly that it robbed the breath from her lungs. Perhaps she had grown to expect the woman’s incessant need to see the good in people, that for Snow to not even give Regina the chance to prove that she did, truly, care for Emma, caused the sorceress to feel completely blindsided. In the end, the curse and the repercussions it had caused really was the last straw for the woman in front of her. Regina had torn her family apart, robbed Snow of ever seeing her little girl grow up, and now that they had found each another once more, Regina desperately longed to keep Emma as an adult as well.

That, it seemed, did not sit well with Snow at _all._

“You already took Emma from me once, Regina,” Snow told her dangerously. “And I will be _damned_ if I let you do it again.” Regina opened her mouth to speak, but Snow wouldn’t allow it. Taking a step forward, she continued fiercely, “No! I gave you _every_ chance to make something better of yourself, and every time you disappointed me. I won’t let you do the same to her. Emma deserves better than that.”

“I love her!” Regina raged, the panic within her making her feel like she was suffocating. “What more could you want for her?! I would give her _everything!_ ”

“Yes,” Snow quietly agreed, her own face starting to look pained as she realized. “I don’t doubt that you would. You’ve always been fiercely devoted to the few that you loved, but…” 

The anger washed away from Snow’s face, instead masking in a sympathy that made Regina want to rip her larynx straight from her throat. “I’m sorry, Regina,” she softly continued, “But I can’t take the chance that someday, whether it be months or years from now, something will happen that will make you…” But Snow trailed off, unable to find a proper word to describe the horror Regina could inflict should she become provoked enough. 

The woman sighed softly, almost regrettably, as she finished, “I can’t take the chance that you’ll hurt her again. Emma’s already in so much pain because of this, and even if she manages to move past it, I will never condone a relationship that will put her at risk of falling apart again. I just… I _can’t._ ”

Regina’s heart was thumping wildly in her chest, her fear starting to consume her anger as it ate her alive from the inside out. Perhaps her chances now with Emma were slim, given all that had happened, but even a slim hope was better than none at all. She didn’t know if her sanity could take it if she didn’t even have a _chance_ to try to make things right. Her grip tightening around the bars, Regina pushed herself closer towards the woman threatening to end it all. “I’m warning you, Snow.” Her voice was low, dangerous, yet on the verge of falling apart. “Do _not_ do this. If you take away yet another person that I love…”

“I’m just giving her the _choice,_ Regina,” Snow told her firmly, her eyes flashing at being blamed for yet another one of Regina’s miseries. “If she chooses to forget you, that won’t be because of my doing; it will be because of yours.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Regina countered, wishing she didn’t sound as desperate as she did in that moment. “If she chooses to keep me in her memory, what then? You’ve made it perfectly clear that you don’t want me in her life, so am I to expect a backup offer should this one fail?”

Snow looked at her sympathetically, as though Regina was nothing but a foolish child with hope for things that will never come to pass. “To be honest, Regina, I really don’t think that she will.”

“But if she _does?_ ” Regina pressed, unable to allow herself to give up hope just yet. She had to believe, somewhere deep down, that Emma loved her enough never to do something like that. “Will you finally just leave us the hell alone? Because this really doesn’t even concern you, and quite frankly, the fact you even _think—!_ ”

“ _If_ she does,” Snow interrupted, “I will respect her choice.”

Regina clenched her jaw, her eyes darkening as she took in the expression on Snow’s face. “You’re lying,” she accused. “You already told me that you would never condone it, so don’t stand there and tell me—”

“Not condoning it and _stopping_ it are two very different things,” Snow reminded her firmly. “But like I said… I really don’t think there will be any cause for me to worry. You have already pushed Emma far past her breaking point, and I doubt she would be so quick to stay there. It’s killing her, Regina. Loving _you_ is killing her.”

Regina’s entire body stiffened as she used every ounce of strength within her to stay composed. She _refused_ to break down in front of her, but she was nearing her wit’s end. Snow seemed to see this, and aggravatingly decided to make it worse with her false platitudes. “I really am sorry…”

“Get out,” Regina growled, unable to take this anymore. There was torture, and then there was _this._ Regina already felt trapped enough as it was; she didn’t need to continue to feel suffocated by things beyond her control. “ _Get out!_ ” she screamed, this time with enough force to actually cause Snow to take two steps backwards.

Regina was seething, her eyes almost black as she looked at Snow with more contempt than she had ever had for another person. It seemed, after all this time, there truly was no end to the pain the woman could inflict upon her.

Snow should count herself lucky that there were bars between them, because if Regina was able to get her hands on her right then…

Snow seemed to sense this and took the dangerous shift in the air as her cue to leave, but not without shooting her one last look of sympathy that made Regina wish, more than anything else, that she could summon up enough magic inside of her to set this entire building on _fire._ That mere look seemed to crawl over her skin like a sickness, seeping into her pores and rotting her from the inside out. It made Regina feel dirty, it made her feel _weak._

And it made her resolve, once and for all, to do whatever it takes to never see that look upon anyone’s face again.

**TBC…**


	5. Coping

**CHAPTER FIVE  
Coping**

Rain beat down heavily on the blackened pavement that separated the town from the rest of the world, the stillness of the night being broken by the sound of an approaching vehicle. Tires screeching against the slippery ground, it came to a stop just mere paces before the “Leaving Storybrooke” sign, the driver knowing better than to just barrel past it and into the unknown.

A girl of no more than sixteen years old was forcefully guided out of the backseat by her captor, her eyes wide and frightened as she began to realize why she had been brought there.

“No, please—!”

A firm hand clasped around her wrist. “This isn’t personal, dearie,” her captor assured her, as though that could somehow make up for what was happening right now. “I merely needed someone who wouldn’t be missed, should something go wrong. One can’t be too careful, you see.”

“But m-my friends…!” The protest was feeble, weak.

It caused the man to chuckle. “I know they have yet to reconnect with you, my dear. And your family… they didn’t come over with the curse, did they?” The girl’s throat constricted, tears prickling the back of her eyes. He was right, on both accounts. “A story I could spin about _you_ , should I need to,” he reminded her.

Her breathing shallowed substantially. It would be so easy for him too, as she was about to go back home once the Queen’s curse had struck the land. Her friends could merely believe she had gotten out before it whisked them away to this place. It disheartened her greatly, increasing her fear of the unknown tenfold.

“But I am not unkind,” her captor told her with a grin, which brought no comfort to the girl’s restless mind. “I believe these hold some significance to you?” 

The girl looked down at the offering in his hands, distress crossing over her features. If this was anywhere else, they would serve as a small comfort. But here, in this place, a land without magic, they did no such thing. They were useless.

Still, the girl reached for them. In the end, it was better to have them than to not, despite how foolish a notion it was to place faith in their power.

“Don’t look so concerned,” the man chided her, as though her fear was unwarranted. “This is just a precaution; I’m sure the magic that surrounded the town line is no longer intact.” A gentle push was met with resistance, so a more forceful shove followed. “Come along, dearie; don’t make this harder than it has to be…”

The girl fought against his grip the closer they got to the line, her lungs constricting painfully in her throat as her heart pounded against her ribcage. She was trying, desperately, to gain enough momentum to throw _him_ over the line instead of the other way around, but it was to no avail. She was already small for her age and he deceivingly strong for his, and with one last screech in the vain hope that someone would hear, the girl’s body tumbled over the town line, her knees hitting the wet pavement with a loud thwack.

A cry echoed through the night air.

After taking a moment to gather her bearings, the girl furiously snapped her head up, expecting to meet the dark eyes of her captor that stood but mere paces in front of her. Instead, the only thing she was met with was the dark, winding road that looked nothing like the direction in which she had just come from. No man, no car, and no sign.

Storybrooke was gone.

[x]

When Emma was a freshman in high school, she had read a book that had described the effects of drowning. She could remember how the character’s stomach had twisted in their gut and rocked up and down, as though they were fastened to a roller coaster with no foreseeable end. Chest hot and tight, breath wouldn’t come no matter how hard they wished for it. They wanted to scream, _needed_ to scream, and yet when their mouth stretched wide, over and over again, no sound came out of it. The silence, in the end, and the hopelessness that it cemented, turned out to be far more agonizing than the pain itself.

That was how Emma felt now, when she was forced to confront the world around her.

Years of growing up in the system had toughened her enough to deal with some pretty gruesome situations, yet there was still a big difference when it came to being able to comprehend a parent beating their children and an _Evil Queen_ ripping the hearts from her victim’s chests. It seemed so disconnected from reality, especially when Emma’s eyes fell on the woman who had apparently committed these horrendous crimes. 

Regina was so put together; pantsuits neatly pressed, hair and makeup done just _so._ She spent the majority of her week pouring over paperwork in her office, doing a job that was so nauseatingly _normal_ that it just didn’t make any sense; how Regina went from this corseted, egotistical murderer to head of the PTA who’s apple crisp was favored at school bake sales.

It was almost laughable, it sounded so ridiculous.

Not that Emma ever believed Regina was incapable of malice, as she had witnessed firsthand how manipulative and cruel Regina could be when she wanted something, but still… Emma _never_ thought her capable of doing something that horrible. At least, not personally, as Regina always seemed the type to get others to do her dirty work for her.

And what was awful about it was that Emma knew her, and therefore knew that if Regina hadn’t killed Graham herself, she would have said ‘no’ when asked if she had done it. She favored technicalities, as it was just another way to manipulate things to her own end, but as there was no way to get around it without lying outright, and because she had promised Emma that was something she wouldn’t do anymore, Regina had reluctantly confirmed it.

It was enough for Emma to desperately reach for the blissful nothingness that resided at the bottom of a liquor bottle. In a world where nothing made sense, it was the only thing that made the madness bearable.

Emma was more than aware of how bad a coping mechanism it was, as she had seen alcohol destroy far more of her foster parents than any child should, and the shame she felt for being unable to handle everything that was going on forced her to hide her actions from those who would judge her badly for it. 

Still, it wasn’t as though her inebriated state went completely unnoticed. Emma could see the knowing look in Mary Margaret’s eyes, her gaze filled with sympathy and pain as she watched her daughter seek some semblance of sanity in all the wrong places. She said nothing however, the guilt of being partly to blame for Emma’s inability to comprehend the world where she had come from leaving her silent over such a delicate matter. In truth, Emma was thankful for it, as she didn’t want to deal with some kind of half-assed attempt at motherly concern from a woman the same damn _age_ as her. Just the thought of it stood to give her a headache.

David was either unaware of her current ailment or chose to ignore it, and Henry had just figured she was constantly tired, which, quite honestly, she really _was._ She was so damn tired of everything, yet it felt like it had only just begun.

But life didn’t stop just because everything had changed, so after the town meeting where David and Mary Margaret had stepped up, assuming the position of the royalty they once were as they addressed the growing concerns of the townspeople, Emma met them in the back room of City Hall, needing to voice a concern or two of her own.

“The lack of magical incidents around town is worrying me,” David admitted once they had closed the door behind them, able to speak freely now that half the town wasn’t listening. 

“Shouldn’t that be a good thing?” Emma questioned, using the flat of her hand to lean against the far desk. She felt like she was swaying, but didn’t want to risk that it wasn’t just in her head. The position made her feel a hell of a lot steadier. “Cause call me crazy, but chasing ogres down Main street is _not_ my idea of a party.”

“It’s not mine either, but that cloud _did_ bring magic to Storybrooke, didn’t it?” David countered, speaking on the assumption they collectively had. “So where is it? It doesn’t make sense that there would only be that one incident at Regina’s.”

“I’m just taking it as a blessing in disguise right now,” Mary Margaret answered, looking exhausted herself as she sat down heavily in the desk chair. “We have enough to deal with. So many people are still unaccounted for, and with King George getting up in arms over who has the rightful power in town, things are going to get chaotic if we don’t start sorting stuff out. The last thing we need right now is a war.”

“A _war?_ ” Emma asked, a disbelieving laugh slipping past her lips. The words came without thought, an edge to her tone as she spoke as though Mary Margaret was being stupid for even having the concern. It sounded ridiculous. “A little dramatic, don’t you think? I mean, what do you think people are gonna do; fashion swords and start having duels in the street? Come on.”

Mary Margaret didn’t look the least bit amused. “Emma, you have to understand that where we come from, things are very different. And honestly, I _wish_ that people fashioning swords was our biggest concern, but what really worries me is the disturbing amount of access to _guns_ that the people of this world have.”

Emma stared at her, feeling some of the blood drain from her face. “…You’re serious?” If that actually happened, Storybrooke would become a bloodbath.

How had this become her _life?_

Mary Margaret pursed her lips into a tight line before answering. “Regina didn’t just bring the people of our realm over here, she brought people from _many_ realms, each of them having their own kingdoms with rightful rulers. Mufasa and King Triton have already agreed to relinquish power, so long as they are able to rule their own people directly beneath us, but there are others who believe they shouldn’t have to answer to anyone. Not to mention quite a few of those rulers had people who challenged them, and with the Sultan’s concern that Jafar has yet to make an appearance, as well as the fact that Scar is still missing, it’s causing me to worry that they may be banning together to overthrow us.”

Emma exhaled a hard breath and covered her eyes with her hand, her thumb and forefinger beginning to massage her temples as a fierce headache threatened to rip through her skull. This was _insanity_ and yet there they were, talking about it as if vengeful fairytale characters was some kind of everyday occurrence. 

She needed another fucking drink.

“We should call a meeting with only the royals before this weekend,” David said, prompting Mary Margaret to nod in agreement. “Maybe we can try to sort something out. Section off parts of the town or…” He trailed off, looking less sure off the plausibility of that idea.

“Well, _great,_ ” Emma interrupted, her words a bit more biting than she intended over how helpless she felt in the political area. Her mind felt hazy, but through the haze still shone her biggest problem. “In the meantime though, what the hell are we going to do with Regina?”

David looked up at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” Emma repeated, looking at him like he was crazy to not understand her concern. “What I _mean_ is that we can’t keep her locked in that cell forever, David. That’s the only one we have and if you guys are right, we might have to stick other people in it later on down the line. Besides, it’d be kind of nice if I could, you know, go…” Emma’s strong voice faltered for a moment, causing her to look down and mumble shamefully, “back… to work.”

Ever since their confrontation, Emma had been unable to bring herself back to the Sherriff’s office. She just didn’t think she could stomach being around Regina; not after what she knew. David understood her hesitancy and was filling in for her at the office, and whenever he got a call he would forward it to Emma, who would take care of it. So it wasn’t as though she wasn’t _working,_ but she was still a far cry from the desk she was supposed to be sitting at. It wasn’t an arrangement she preferred. 

Mary Margaret’s face masked in sympathy for her daughter’s plight, but it was David who spoke.

“Short of house arrest, Emma, I really don’t know what we could do. And if we were to do _that_ , the mansion would need to be watched around the clock.” David looked at her haplessly as he regrettably continued, “We don’t have that kind of time, with it being just the two of us, and considering you don’t want to see her at _all_ , that cuts it down to just one person: me. It’s impossible.”

“This is a town full of people who have… I don’t know, slayed _dragons_ and shit; there’s gotta be _someone_ willing to help us!” Emma exclaimed, her words slurring a bit as she threw out her hands exasperatedly. “With everything going on, it’ll probably be ages until we can hold some kind of trial for her, and I… I _can’t—_ ” Emma’s voice broke, her desperation showing through the façade of authoritative indifference she tried to uphold. Thankfully, Mary Margaret stepped in.

“We’ll figure something out.”

Apprehension colored David’s face. “Snow…”

“ _We’ll figure something out,_ ” Mary Margaret told him firmly, not wanting his pessimism over the subject to further break their already fragile daughter. “There were a few people that helped settle the crowd before the town meeting, and if keeping the peace is in their nature, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to ask for their assistance. The worst that could happen is that they say no.”

“No, the worst that could happen is that they volunteer with ulterior motives and assassinate Regina in her sleep.”

“Charming!” Mary Margaret exclaimed furiously, shooting him a look like now was not the time to bring something like that up.

David sighed heavily. “Look, I’m sorry, Snow, but we have to look at this realistically. There might not _be_ another option besides keeping Regina at the station. I know it’s not ideal, but Emma needs to prepare herself for the possibility that she might have to face her again. She can’t avoid her workplace forever.”

“I will not put her in that position again!” Mary Margaret fumed, her gaze fierce as she stared down her husband. “Being around Regina is _bad for her,_ David. Look what happened last time! Do you really think Emma needs that, on top of everything else right now?”

“What Emma _needs_ is for you guys to stop talking about me like _I’m not here,_ ” Emma snapped, causing the couple in front of her to immediately fall silent, equal looks of guilt flashing in their eyes. Emma sighed heavily, running her fingers through her tussled hair. She hated this; it made her feel weak. _Regina_ made her feel weak. 

“Look, Mary Margaret, I appreciate the support, but I’m not made out of glass.” Even though they were spoken to the woman in front of her, Emma was more trying to convince herself of that than anyone else. She was stronger than this; she had to be. “Just because the _last_ thing I want to deal with right now is her, doesn’t mean that I’ll never be able to. I’m not stupid, I’m going to have to at some point; she’s… she’s Henry’s mother too.”

Which, quite frankly, was something Emma was _not_ looking forward to in the slightest. Still, Emma knew more than most that running from your problems only got you so far, and in the end, they still had a way with catching up to you at the worst of times.

“All I need right now is some space from her,” she continued, her words weighing heavy with exhaustion over how much of an emotional turmoil this had all been for her. “Okay? There’s too much going on right now and alright, maybe I haven’t handled _any_ of it in the best way, but I’m trying. And since there’s no way to just magically forget everything that happened between us, it’s been pretty damn difficult. But I’ll adapt. It’s… hell, it’s what I’ve done for most of my life, so I will at some point. I just… I need some time to process everything, alright? Please. I just want to deal with one thing at a time right now.”

Emma wished they could understand how hard this had been on her, but how could they? Their real life was what Emma had previously believed to be nothing more than fantasy. Finding out everything you knew was _wrong_ was probably one of the most disorienting experiences a person could ever have, and yet Emma had no one who could even _begin_ to understand. Everyone in this town just had to adapt to a new place of residence; Emma had to adapt to an entirely new _belief_ system. 

It made nothing feel real anymore.

“Emma, I… about that,” Mary Margaret began hesitantly, her eyes shifting momentarily over towards David in the corner before once more landing on the face of her frustrated daughter. “There… _might_ be a way for you to forget about Regina, if… if that is what you think would be best.”

Emma swore she could feel her brain grind to a screeching halt at those unexpected words and she stared blankly at Mary Margaret, wondering if she had heard her right. _Forget Regina?_ Was that even….?

Suddenly, the room erupted into argument.

[x]

Emma had to get out of there.

David was _furious_ at Mary Margaret for even suggesting such a thing, as apparently she had done the same thing herself once upon a time, and halfway into the ‘conversation’ Emma didn’t even feel like this was about her anymore, but about _them._

Emma felt so blindsided by the whole thing that she didn’t even know how to feel about it. The way Mary Margaret spoke of True Love it sounded as though she was destined for a life of pain should she continue to separate herself from Regina, but how much better would it be if she continued to be with her? How _could_ she stay with her, after everything that had happened, after everything that she _knew?_

Emma hated it, all of it; destiny, fate, all those _damn_ words that implied she didn’t have a right to live her own life, to make her own choices. It felt as though she was being backed into a corner, towards something that in the end, would only end up hurting her further. She wanted to fight against it, prove them _wrong_ , prove that her life was her own, but Emma barely felt connected to the world around her as it was, and if she didn’t have a grasp on reality, how could she ever hope to have a grasp on her own life?

She didn’t want to be with Regina. She _couldn’t_ be with her, and yet there was still a part inside of her that ached to fall into her again, to just bury her face in Regina’s neck and block out the world around her. She wanted to go back to the simplicity of just _loving_ someone, yet even as she thought it, Emma realized that nothing had ever really been ‘simple’ between them. Still, she craved it.

And she hated herself for it.

Emma didn’t trust herself to drive, so she ended up walking all the way back to her apartment, wishing she could run away from her thoughts yet knowing there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to ever get far enough.

Could she really just _forget_ about Regina? The thought was tempting; Emma couldn’t deny that. It would make dealing with everything far simpler. Yet even still… it felt wrong. Experiences, the good and the bad, shaped people into who they were; Emma knew that more than most. She supposed that was why Mary Margaret cautioned her that should she take it, eradicating the love in her heart held the strong possibility of changing her. But would she be better for it? That was the question.

Emma didn’t want to live the rest of her life feeling empty because she was magically destined for someone she couldn’t stomach being with; it seemed unusually cruel. Still, the decision was something she couldn’t take lightly. If she did it, it would change everything. She shared a _son_ with Regina; it would complicate things pretty badly because of that, and the last thing Emma wanted to do was put Henry in that kind of position.

Maybe it was stupid to even consider it though, as the potion was magical and so far it seemed no one was able to control the magic that was in town. Getting it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Yet the possibility that she could, no matter how slim, caused Emma’s mind to work on overdrive, trying to figure out if it would be worth it or not.

Should she take the easy way out? _Could_ she?

So far, the ‘no’ column was winning, but with how much of a rollercoaster Emma’s emotions had been lately, that could change within the hour.

She _really_ needed another drink.

When Emma pushed open the door to her apartment, she was greeted with the sight of Henry sitting on the couch, playing video games. His head snapped up when he heard the door open and without even a word of greeting, he asked, “Can I see my mom yet?”

Emma exhaled a hard breath, slumping against the wall. Henry had been asking that question nonstop for the past couple days and honestly, having a repeat of this conversation was the _last_ thing she needed right now. Running her fingers through her hair, she answered shortly with, “You already know the answer to that, kid.”

Henry’s gaze darkened and he threw the Wii remote to the ground, apparently intending to not make this any easier on her. “This isn’t fair!” he exclaimed. “I’m not a little kid, Emma; I’m not going to get _scarred_ by seeing my mom in jail!”

Emma blinked, momentarily taken aback. “You know Regina’s in jail?” They hadn’t told him they had arrested her for a reason.

Henry scoffed at her. “Duh. I’m not _stupid._ She cast the curse, obviously people are going to be mad about it.” Emma crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows, which prompted Henry to amend, “Okay, _and_ I might have overhead you guys talking.”

Yeah, that was more like it.

“What did I tell you before about spying?”

Henry raised an eyebrow in her direction. “To not get caught?”

“I—” Emma faltered for a moment, her eyebrows creasing as she began to second guess herself. “Did I really tell you that?” It actually sounded like something she would say, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember having that conversation. Still, Henry nodded and Emma scowled. “Okay, well scratch that; the new rule is that you _don’t do it._ ”

God, she sucked at this whole parenting thing.

Henry rolled his eyes, which about summed up how much authority she really had. If Emma was a little more sober that would probably bother her, but right now she just wanted this conversation to end so she could barricade herself in her bedroom and drink her problems away; because in the end, it was just fucking easier than trying to make a decision regarding her love for Regina.

In all honesty, Emma was pretty sure this road was leading nowhere good, and yet she insisted on barreling down it all the same. 

A-plus decision making skills, clearly.

“Just because you’re mad at my mom, doesn’t mean you have to keep _me_ from her,” Henry told her firmly, because apparently this conversation was not over. _Great._ “She’s all alone and sad, and maybe even scared. She needs someone, Emma. No one else cares about her.”

Whether Henry intended it or not, those words sucker punched Emma in the gut. “That is _not_ true,” she insisted without thought, because if she had thought about it, she certainly never would have admitted it out loud. “I put her in there for her _safety_ , Henry. The town…” But Emma trailed off, not wanting Henry to know the extent of the vengeance some of the residents held. She sighed heavily. “Look, I just don’t think it’s a good idea right now. Your mom is in a bad place, and I don’t just mean because she’s in jail. I mean…” She waved her hand erratically around her head as she finished, “You know.”

Competent words were clearly not her thing right now. This was _such_ a bad time to be having this conversation with her kid; Henry was looking at her like she had five heads and not one of them was making any sense.

“I promise when we sort some stuff out you can see her, okay?” Emma tried instead. “But you gotta give it some time. There are a lot of things going on right now, and I don’t want you caught up in the middle of it all. That’s not fair to you.”

Henry bit the inside of his cheek and shifted his eyes away from her. “Whatever,” he mumbled, not believing her for a second. Emma sighed, feeling really helpless over this entire situation. 

She didn’t know what the right thing to do was anymore, but she hoped this was it. She didn’t want Henry caught between the two of them, especially when the wounds were so fresh. That couldn’t be good for him. 

Besides, Mary Margaret and David were convinced Regina would be dangerous if she found a way to tap into her magic again, and although Emma wished she could, she _really_ couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t end up negatively affecting Henry somehow. Regina would never hurt him on purpose of course, but magic in this realm, when it happened, had already proven to be really unstable. That wasn’t a risk Emma was willing to take right now.

She just really hoped that was the right decision to make, because a part of her knew she had been making all the wrong ones lately.

**TBC…**


	6. Revelations

**CHAPTER SIX  
Revelations**

“God, you _reek._ ”

Emma looked up, her haggard appearance accented by the gauntness of her eyes. After taking another long pull from the cigarette between her fingers, Emma’s exhale came out like a hard sigh, the smoke curling around her like a protective barrier. “Don’t doubt it,” she murmured in response, eyes shifting towards the ground. The area around the bench was littered with cigarette butts, indicating just how long Emma had failed to move; failed to do _anything_ but silently brood in the stillness of the park.

Ruby scrunched up her face a bit at the sight of her friend before apparently deciding that she could stomach the stench of sorrow, and sat down next to her. “Things aren’t going well, I take it?”

Emma laughed. It sounded hoarse, broken. Her lungs felt like they might collapse at any moment, yet she pulled on the cigarette once more, finding that the movement had become more routine than anything else at this point. “Understatement.”

The past few days had brought nothing but headaches. Although they had finally found enough volunteers to place Regina under house arrest, Emma found that having access to her office left quite a lot to be desired. Her days were filled with frantic townspeople filing missing persons reports for their love ones that still had yet to be found, and an above average call-in rate for complaints of property damage and theft. Hook was threatening the Lost Boys lives if Emma didn’t ‘get off her pretty ass and take legal action for the damage to his damn ship’, and Elphaba had been making a scene at Gold’s shop the last two days, claiming he had stolen her precious ruby slippers.

Needless to say, the witch was now banned from the property for constantly disturbing the peace, and Emma had to look into the so called ‘theft’, as though something like that was actually _important_ in the grand scheme of things.

It was ridiculous, and yet things like this had actually become part of her _job description._

In the end though, she supposed it was better than magic going haywire again, but David’s worry that there hadn’t been anymore incidents had started to rub off on her, and Emma felt like she was hanging on the edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because, in the end, that was all her life ever amounted to anyway; waiting for the next shit storm to make its appearance.

Emma took a long sip of her water bottle, feeling the vodka she had filled it with burn its way down her throat. It was the only constant in her life that held some sort of comfort, as its endgame never came as a surprise.

Ruby arched an eyebrow at her. “Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?”

Emma’s eyebrows rose in surprise as she turned to face her. She had thought the clear liquid wouldn’t be distinguishable, but clearly she had been wrong. “How did you…?” 

Ruby tapped the side of her nose softly. “I have an above average sense of smell. Which is why you stink something _terrible_ to me right now, by the way.”

“Oh.” Emma put the cap back on the bottle, feeling a little embarrassed to have been called out like that. Even Mary Margaret, who Emma assumed knew how she managed to get through the day, never said anything. “Right. The whole… werewolf thing.”

Ruby searched her face for a long moment, trying to judge Emma’s reaction before deciding to just straight up ask, “That freak you out?”

Emma exhaled a long sigh, flicking her cigarette to the ground before crushing it with the heel of her boot. “Honestly? I think it’s kinda gotten to the point where everything is so fucked up that I really only have enough energy to dwell on the worst of it. So no, even though it probably should. Fuck, maybe I’m just too drunk to care anymore. I don’t know.”

There was a long pause as Ruby tugged her red cloak around her body a little tighter, the light breeze in the air beginning to make the area a little chilly. “Have you spoken to Regina?” she asked after a moment, genuinely curious, however the look of death that Emma shot her made her hold up her hands in light surrender. “Alright, not a good topic of conversation. Sorry.”

Emma ran her fingers through her hair before quickly reaching for her pack of cigarettes, finding the need to chain smoke once more at just the mere mention of the brunette’s name. Emma had been trying not to think of her, but that was much easier said than done. After Regina had gotten out of jail, she had gotten her personal affects back, which included her cell phone. Not even an hour afterwards, Emma had gotten a text message that read:

“I know you don’t wish to speak to me right now, but please, whatever you do, do not take that potion. You know me well enough to know that my pride doesn’t condone begging, but that’s what I’m doing. Please… I know I deserve your anger, but I couldn’t bear it if you went to such extremes. Losing you so completely like that would kill me, Emma. I beg of you, don’t do it.”

The intense wave of emotions that Regina elicited with her words sought to make Emma ill, and so she threw her phone against the wall, shattering the screen with the impact, and then proceeded to scream at Mary Margaret for telling Regina about that. It seemed unnecessarily cruel, not just to Regina but to her as well, and all it stood to do was make the situation worse. Emma wouldn’t lie and said she hadn’t been tempted, but in the end, it was something she knew she couldn’t do. At least, not at this point in time. It hurt, yes, but Emma was dealing with it; maybe in a really shitty, unhealthy way, but she was surviving, _because that’s what she did._

Now she was afraid that Regina would become frantic over it, scared that Emma really _would_ do something like that, and it opened the door up to more communication between them that Emma _really_ could not handle right now. But she had fucked up her phone without thought, and now she couldn’t even text Regina back and tell her that it wasn’t going to happen.

Really, all in all, her life was going _swell._

“I just… I really don’t wanna think about her right now, Rubes,” Emma responded, her tone apologetic only because of how she had glared at woman for it. But then she remembered something and amended, “Red, sorry. This whole thing’s kinda—” Emma waved her hand a little, indicating the insanity of it all, before placing another cigarette between her lips. 

Ruby shook her head though, dismissing the correction. “No, I… actually like Ruby better.”

Emma raised her eyebrows, surprised by that. Everyone else seemed to go back to their original names, and Emma had been having a hell of a time trying to remember to call them something different; she failed at it about ninety five percent of the time. After lighting her cigarette, Emma asked her, “Why? I mean, not that I’m not glad for it or anything, cause it does make things a hell of a lot easier for me, but… everyone else has kind of, I don’t know, I guess _dismissed_ who they were during the curse; cause it was such shit for them, or whatever else…” 

“Shit?” Ruby repeated, chuckling a little in disbelief. “Do you want to know what’s shit? Having to wear _this,_ ” she pulled at the edge of her cloak, “because I’m afraid that if another magical incident happens and I’m around it, that I’ll turn back into a wolf and not be able to control myself. _Shit,_ Emma, is knowing that you’re dangerous, and that you could seriously hurt people, if not kill them. And _shit_ is remembering that you already have once before.”

Emma stared at her, the cigarette hanging rather lifelessly between her fingers as she tried to process that information. Everyone had been so happy that the curse had broken that Emma hadn’t even considered that there could be people in Storybrooke that _weren’t_ better off for it. Everyone blamed Regina for ruining their lives, and yet there Ruby was, actually _glad_ for what the woman had done.

Ruby sighed softly, picking at the bottom of her cloak. “I know Regina’s curse was supposed to take away all our happy endings, but honestly…” she looked up at Emma, sadness and loss brewing behind her hazel eyes, “being Ruby? That was the happiest, _easiest_ time of my life. And maybe it’s horrible to say, but if given the choice… I’d much rather be her.”

Emma looked at her for a long moment before finally needing to turn away, taking a long drag of her cigarette to try to distract herself from her plaguing thoughts. “Yeah… I get that,” she admitted softly, because not a day went by when Emma didn’t wish for the blissful ignorance she had before the curse broke. It was so much easier, and God, she was _happy._ It wasn’t perfect, not by any means, but Emma craved the feeling of loving and being loved so desperately that it tore her heart in half, to know that things would never be like that again. 

She missed just _being_ with Regina. She missed feeling her in her arms, she missed their playful banter, and hell, she even missed being _fussed_ over because of the stupidest of things, like getting herself soaked in the rain because she forgot her umbrella. She missed the teasing, she missed the kisses, she missed the smiles. She missed how hard it was for them sometimes, because it made it so much more worth it when they figured things out. She missed the feeling of completion when she was around the woman she grew to love so deeply.

And yet, it didn’t matter. The moment Emma began to miss her, not long afterwards she would be reminded of _why_ they couldn’t be together. Lies, betrayal, curses, _murder._ And so Emma would drink until she puked, desperately trying to run from the cycle she was trapped in, yet the next day would come, and it would inevitably start all over again.

God, what she wouldn’t give to just turn back time. Emma didn’t care how fucked up that was, didn’t care that she’d rather forget the person Regina really was to just be happy again, because she hated living like this. It got worse every day and she didn’t know how to make it stop.

Until later that night, when she was sitting on her bed practically drinking herself into a damn coma… she finally did.

[x]

Although Regina was thankful for being back in her own home, a large part of her detested it. The walls screamed with memories, her bed sheets still smelled distinctively of Emma, and yet the masochist in her dwelled where the blonde had resided the most. It truly was pathetic, what she had been reduced to, and yet Regina found herself reliving the pain of loss as she trudged around the house in one of Emma’s oversized band t-shirts, unable to let go of the desire to have the other woman near. It was a pale image of her – a measly garment that had clearly seen better days – and yet as it was the closest she could get, Regina wrapped herself in its memory.

She wanted to tell herself that it reminded her of when they were happy, yet all it really did was prove to her how much she had lost. Still, a part of her needed it. Despite the pain it elicited, it also brought her some small semblance of comfort that Regina found she sorely needed.

She felt so terribly alone.

Henry had been texting her, but being unable to see him in person only stood to make that a small comfort. He didn’t seem angry, but then again, they had yet to speak about anything that had gone on since she dropped him off at school the morning the curse broke. She was glad for it honestly, as that was a conversation they needed to have face to face, but she worried that despite his insistence that it was Emma keeping him from her, that a part of him was glad for the separation. Henry’s hatred towards ‘the Evil Queen’ had become clear over the past few months, and despite his belief that True Love had changed her, Regina still worried that he feared all that she could do, all that she _had_ done. 

That was a part of her life that she _never_ wanted Henry to know about, and yet within the span of a day all of his suspicions had become truth, casting a blinding light on the darkest part of her. Regina may have never been a truly _good_ person, but she had always tried to do right by him. It was _those_ memories she wanted Henry to have of her, not the ones his maternal grandmother was sure to fill his head with.

Regina desperately wanted her son back, but at the same time, there was a part of her that knew that wasn’t the best thing for him right now. She wasn’t allowed to leave her own home, there were still many residents of Storybrooke that sought her head, and she was awaiting a town trial to decide her fate. That was not something that a child should be around to witness, and although it pained her not to see him, Regina trusted Emma with Henry. He would be taken care of for the time being, at the very least.

Regina exhaled a long breath as she descended the stairs, bare feet padding along the mahogany paneling as she made her way down to the kitchen to make herself a late dinner. Her gaze flickered over to the front door for a moment, scowling at the half-assed construction job the dwarves had done after an ogre had torn the thing off its hinges. It was _terribly_ ugly, yet Regina supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers. In the end, the only reason it was fixed was because she was being held there; otherwise, she was certain no one would have bothered.

Regina wasn’t exactly high on the list of Storybrooke’s most well-liked people.

When Regina turned the corner however, heading towards the kitchen, she nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight of someone in her peripheral. 

“Apologies, _Your Majesty,_ ” Rumpelstiltskin drawled, placing his hand upon his abdomen as he gave her a little head bow. “I didn’t mean to startle you…”

“What the _hell_ are you doing in my home?” Regina snapped, furious that he had managed to make her noticeably flinch from his unexpected presence. “I’m fairly certain that Mulan didn’t let _the Dark One_ in through my front door.”

“A correct assumption,” Rumpelstiltskin concurred, taking a few steps towards her. “However, you have two doors and only one guard. I shudder to think of how easy it would be, should someone come here with ill intent.” His smile was unsettling, yet Regina merely narrowed her eyes in response. “Perhaps you should ask our dear Sherriff for more protection…”

Protection? They were her _jailers_. Though they were supposed to serve both purposes, Regina was fairly certain that should she be in danger, no one would come running.

She was the Evil Queen that had cursed them, after all.

“What do you want?” Regina asked, getting straight to the point. She crossed her arms over her chest, standing up straighter to look at least a little more intimidating than she felt in that moment. But then again, it was hard to look menacing when one is only wearing an oversized t-shirt and panties that were, thankfully, covered by the length of the shirt’s fabric.

She felt entirely undignified; although to be fair, she hadn’t exactly been expecting company.

“I believe I owe you something?” Rumpelstiltskin asked, the question quite rhetorical as he withdrew a stack of photographs from behind his back. Regina’s eyes widened, realizing what they were, and she immediately swiped for them. However, they were torn from her reach in an instant. “Ah, ah, ah,” he tutted her, making Regina’s gaze darken substantially.

“Emma and I broke the damn curse; _that_ was the deal we made,” she reminded him furiously. “Now I suggest you hand over the pictures, less you wish me to pry them from your fingers myself.”

“ _Temper,_ ” Rumpelstiltskin chided her, as though he were scolding a child. “And yes, that was the deal we made. However, it seems we have run into a slight problem.”

Regina’s eyes flashed. “And what might that be, exactly?”

“The curse did not break correctly.”

Regina blinked, confusion washing over her features. “What do you mean?” she asked, not expecting that answer in the slightest. Everyone had their memories back, didn’t they? Unless they _were_ supposed to go back to the Enchanted Forest, and instead…

“The town line is still very much intact,” Rumpelstiltskin informed her, looking terribly displeased by that little fact. “Once someone wanders across it, Storybrooke disappears. And _that_ , dearie, was not supposed to happen.”

Regina raised her eyebrows. “And how exactly do you know _that?_ ” she challenged, though already knew the answer by the uncaring shrug and tiniest of smirks that followed the question. She shook her head disdainfully. “And _I’m_ the one that’s locked up. Tell me, who is the poor soul you sent skittering across the line? I assume someone who couldn’t put up much of a fight, because, _well…_ ” Regina smirked at him, eyes shifting downwards to his cane, clearly indicating his physical incapability. 

Rumpelstiltskin shot her a dark look at the implication, yet answered, “ _That,_ Your Majesty, is really none of your concern.”

“No?” Regina countered. “Because I’m fairly certain it became my concern when you _broke into my home_ just because your little experiment went wrong.”

“That isn’t the end of my grievances,” Rumpelstiltskin told her, beginning to circle her in some vain attempt to make her feel trapped, or some other such nonsense. Regina however stood her ground, not one to be intimidated by something so trivial. “Magic, it seems, is not quite as accessible as it should have been. This is also a problem; one that very much needs correcting.”

“And what the hell do you expect me to do about that?” Regina snapped, her patience beginning to wane. “This was _your_ curse, not mine; so if something went wrong, I don’t believe that it was my doing, _nor_ is it my problem. I held up my end of the deal, now I expect that you will do the same. Hand over the damn pictures, _now!_ ”

Regina furiously held out her hand, expecting to be handed the photographs, yet instead she nearly gasped out loud when magic shot through her veins so violently that it made her stance falter, and a large fireball erupted out of her palm. “Shit, _shit,_ ” she frantically cursed, almost accidentally letting it go by how surprised she was by its presence. Thankfully, she covered her hand just in time, dissipating it to nothing.

God, if she had set the damn house on fire…

“Well, well,” Rumpelstiltskin purred, his pupils practically dilating at the intriguing information. “Seems someone here _does_ know how to access magic in this realm…”

“That was an accident,” Regina snapped, rolling her fingers into her palm to flex them, making sure the magic within her had dissipated. If she couldn’t control it, she didn’t need to be using it; that just _spelled_ disaster.

Although, quite honestly, the fact that she couldn’t worried her. She hadn’t expected it, and even when it came, it felt both wild and untamed; not at all like how it happened the first time, when she had been protecting both Emma and herself. Perhaps though, it was just the nature of the spell; offense versus defense. However, Regina really couldn’t be certain.

Rumpelstiltskin tilted his head to the side for a moment, assessing her and the situation before finally asking, “I’m curious, dearie… is _this_ where the curse broke …?”

Regina eyes darkened. “I think it’s time for you to leave.” She knew what Rumpelstiltskin was implying, and if her manor was the only place where magic could be accessed, she _really_ did not want him around. Regina didn’t trust the man’s intentions and it worried her, to still be unsure of why he wanted the curse to break in the first place and why he needed both magic and the town line to work in his favor. 

“Oh, I don’t think so, Your Majesty,” Rumpelstiltskin responded, his lips turning up into the tiniest of smirks. “At least, not yet. You see, my problem is, in fact, _your_ problem as well. And unless you would like me to tell our dear Sherriff that your current place of arrest allows you the use of magic – which, I assume, no one in this town would be so quick to condone – you _will_ help me figure out what went wrong with the curse.”

Regina narrowed her eyes, not exactly fond of being blackmailed… _again._ But, in all honesty, she did not want to spend more time in that damned cell, and it infuriated her that Rumpelstiltskin seemed to know that. “If you’d like answers, I only have one for you: you chose the _wrong_ people to end the curse,” she snapped. “Emma may be my True Love, but we are _damaged._ If you wanted results, you should have shoved the two Charming idiots together; their love, I assume, is _pure._ ” Regina said the last word with such disdain, finding the whole thing rather sickening.

“Oh no, dearie, it _had_ to be you,” Rumpelstiltskin told her firmly. “Well, no actually, it had to be the Savior; however, it certainly seemed fitting that _you_ were the one destined for her. Quite the example of poetic justice, wouldn’t you agree?”

Regina just snarled at him.

“So search your brain for answers, Your Majesty, because _something_ went wrong that day, and I intend to find out what it was,” Rumpelstiltskin continued, advancing on her. His lips upturned into the tiniest of condescending smiles. “In the meantime, however, I am a man of my word…” 

He held out the photographs, and Regina wasted no time snatching them from his grip. Rumpelstiltskin smirked. “Do enjoy those, won’t you? I’m sure they’ll bring back a lot of _fond_ memories, just as that disastrous little garment you’re wearing does…”

“Get. Out. Of. My. _Home,_ ” Regina growled, eyes flashing dangerously. Her hand was gripping the photographs hard, the veins protruding from her wrist from the force. She was _not_ about to just stand here and allow him to make her look the fool. She felt horrible enough as it was.

Rumpelstiltskin merely smirked before giving her an overdramatic bow. “Until next time then, Regina…”

Regina refused to give him any words of parting, instead choosing to watch him like a hawk as he turned, making his way towards her back door. Once he had gone, Regina quickly clicked the lock into place, feeling her hands shake in rage at how humiliated and used she felt. She _hated_ that—

But before she could even finish her train of thought, the anger within her pushed outwards; magic coursing through her body in such an intense, blinding flash that the expensive crystal vase placed delicately on the side table in the foyer shattered in an instant. “Damnit!” she cursed out loud, furious with herself for her lack of control, which only furthered her rage and snapped the table it was previously on into nothing more than kindling.

“Shit, shit…!” Regina swore, immediately placing her hands on her temples, closing her eyes in an attempt to get herself under control. Taking long breaths – in through her nose, out through her mouth – Regina tried to focus on anything else but how she was feeling in that moment. She needed to be able to get a handle on this, because if she didn’t she could end up bringing her entire _house_ down. The accidents had been small thus far, yes, but Regina knew how much power resided within herself, and she knew if she didn’t begin to control it, it could open the floodgates to something rather disastrous.

After a few long moments, Regina began to feel herself calm. Opening her eyes, she took a long breath before moving towards the kitchen, deciding that perhaps some tea would help her relax more fully. Placing the photographs on the countertop, Regina grabbed the kettle off the stove and began to fill it with water from the sink faucet.

But before she could place it back on the burner, heavy knocking on the front door nearly made her jump out of her skin. Feeling herself grow agitated because the unexpected sound had startled her, Regina made a point to pause for a moment and breathe, wanting to be certain her emotions wouldn’t get the better of her.

The knocking continued; heavier, louder, and more insistent.

Exhaling a hard breath, Regina reluctantly trudged out of her kitchen and to the foyer, intent on giving whoever it was a piece of her mind about _disturbing_ people at this late an hour. However, when she ripped open her front door, everything that she had planned to say died in her throat as she stared at her caller, eyes widening in disbelief and surprise.

“Emma…?”

**TBC…**


	7. Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mild dubcon in this chapter. I use the word mild because it doesn’t amount to actual sex, but still, if this is triggering to you, please proceed with caution.

  
**CHAPTER SEVEN  
Confrontation**

Regina felt her breath leave her from the sight of Emma on her porch, the woman looking at her with such raw intensity that Regina felt the gaze tear straight through to her heart. She looked incredibly worse for wear, eyes hollow and hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, her cheeks a tad more defined than Regina had seen a week ago. Emma was a mess, completely and utterly, and yet the sight of her was by far the most beautiful thing Regina could have hoped for in that moment.

Mulan stood behind her, looking terribly apprehensive about the state of their Sherriff when she made her impromptu appearance, but as Emma was her boss, she said nothing to contradict the decision. The blonde noticeably faltered for a moment, eyes taking in Regina’s attire as a mixture of conflicting emotions passed over her face. The former queen felt her cheeks burn a little in embarrassment, knowing how terribly pathetic it must look that she was trudging around the house in _her_ clothing. Thankfully, however, Emma did not comment on it.

Instead, she practically pushed her way past the threshold without a word, forcing Regina to back up a few steps to allow her entrance. When the door closed behind her, separating them from witnesses, Emma’s expression turned distressed.

“ _Fix it…!_ ”

It was said with such raw emotion, such overwhelming desperation, that it made Regina’s heart clench painfully within her chest. “What?” she asked, the helplessness and confusion beginning to etch across her face as she watched the woman she loved fall completely apart before her in an instant.

“This, _all of this…_ ” Emma pleaded, voice cracking under strain as she stepped closer to Regina, invading her personal space. She touched her then, fingertips just barely grazing the soft skin of her cheek as she looked into her eyes with such hopelessness that it stole the breath right from Regina’s lungs. “Just make it go away, make it like it never happened…”

Regina felt her mouth drop open, feeling overwhelmed and completely at a loss from the unexpected plea. The last time she had seen Emma, the woman could barely even look at her. Now she was standing before her, a mere breath away, her anger being outweighed by something far more predominant. “I…”

“You could do it, right?” Emma breathed, eyes searching hers as her fingers curled around the back of Regina’s neck, holding her in place against her chest. She smelled strongly of alcohol and stale cigarettes, answering a question the brunette had yet to pose. “We could find where the magic went, you could… _curse_ us or something – make us forget this ever happened – and we could take Henry and just… we could just _leave,_ Regina…”

Distress masked across the brunette’s face, feeling deep within her beating heart how much pain Emma was in. Her eyes were wild, desperate, and filled with unshed tears as she searched for a solution that Regina knew she could not give her. “Emma…” she whispered sadly. “You’re drunk; you don’t know what you’re—”

“ _No,_ ” Emma said firmly, eyes hardening as she stared right through every wall Regina had ever built. “No, you don’t _get it._ You don’t get how fucking—!” But the words died in her throat, Emma finding herself unable to admit her weaknesses even as she fell apart before her eyes. Instead she pulled Regina closer, pressing their foreheads together as her eyes fluttered closed, breathing in everything the woman had to offer her. 

Everything Regina could have given her, had she not fucked things up the first time around.

“We were _happy,_ ” Emma whispered, the words sounding small and frail. Her hand slid from the back of her neck to cup her cheek, brushing her lips lightly against Regina’s as she turned her face upwards to look into her eyes. “Don’t you want that again…?”

“Of course I do,” Regina breathed, feeling her eyes fall closed as Emma’s thumb traced lightly over her bottom lip. The feeling of it overwhelmed her and a singular tear slipped down her cheek, trying to burn this moment into her memory, for she never believed Emma would be this close to her again, and now that she was, she feared it would once again be the last time she ever felt it. “But I can’t—”

“Yes, you _can,_ ” Emma told her fiercely, desperately, as she clung to Regina as though she was the only thing that even made sense to her in that moment. But she was in a haze, a haze of her own foolish making, and not one that Regina could find a way to release her from. “You’re powerful, aren’t you? _Please,_ Regina… just make it go away…”

An onslaught of emotions rose up within Regina, without a hope or a prayer of even trying to stop them, and in an instant, instinct took over. Choking back a sob as her throat constricted painfully, Regina grasped for her, placing her palms on Emma’s cheeks as she kissed her with all the love and sorrow that burned its way through her heart. Emma allowed the invasion, tangling her fingers in her hair as she parted her lips in invitation, her body pressing firmly against hers as they stumbled back against the far wall.

Emma tasted of whiskey and despair, her breathing uneven as she allotted Regina a moment that the brunette knew, deep within her gut, would not last. Still, they both grasped for the sanity that lay just out of reach, the weight of their shared sorrow suffocating the breath from their lungs. Emma had her pinned, nails scraping helplessly at the skin on the back of Regina’s neck as they both allowed themselves, just for a moment, to forget what all had transpired between them.

When they broke, the loss of connection made Regina exhale a shuddered sob, her fingers tracing the outline of Emma’s jaw as she breathed out her guilt for the pain she had caused. “I’m sorry…” she whispered, wishing that she really could just make all of the blonde’s pain disappear. “God, Emma, I’m _so_ sorry for what I’ve done to you…”

“Don’t be sorry, just _fix it,_ ” Emma fiercely breathed against her lips, her grip on the back of Regina’s neck tightening almost painfully. “I know you can…”

Regina shook her head, distress running hot like fire through her veins. “I can’t,” she told her softly, apologetically. “I… I _won’t,_ Emma, I’m sorry…”

“ _Why?_ ” Emma raged, the desperation within her forcing outwards as she practically shook Regina against the wall, needing to know the answer. “You owe me! You _owe me this,_ Regina! You destroyed _everything—!_ ”

“And yet you’re trying to make me seal a gaping wound with the likes of a band-aid!” Regina exclaimed, trying to make Emma understand what it was that she was asking for. “Magic comes with a price, Emma – it always does – and attempting to fix this in that way will only bring more pain in the end, I can assure you of that.”

“No,” Emma protested, shaking her head as her jaw locked tight. Eyes burning with unshed tears, she looked up at Regina, seeing through everything the woman said and finding so much more beneath the surface of it all. “No, that’s not why you won’t…”

Regina’s eyes fell closed at the accusation, resting her forehead against the blonde’s as the pain of truth tore through her. Face masking in guilt, she softly admitted, “If… even if I could find some way to cast it, one of us will remember. That will be the price, and I’m certain I’ll be the one to pay it. And I’m sorry, but I can’t… I _won’t_ live the rest of my life with you, knowing that you’re only there, that we’re only _happy_ because you couldn’t find it within yourself to accept the worst parts of me. It wouldn’t be real.”

Emma’s eyes darkened, such fury rising up within her that it nearly made Regina gasp out loud. She pulled her forward before shoving her away forcefully, causing Regina’s back to collide heavily against the wall. “What the hell gives you the right to put your happiness above mine, after _everything—!_ ”

“I’m still a _person,_ Emma!” Regina exclaimed, needing her to realize that she wasn’t the only one affected by everything that had happened; that she wasn’t the only one in pain from this. “Perhaps I deserve a lot after everything I’ve done, but I _damn_ well don’t deserve to be trapped in another relationship that will bring me nothing but pain! I love you, I will _always_ love you, but I will _not_ live the rest of my life in some kind of fucked up façade that will do nothing but destroy my self-worth! Just because I’m bound to you, does not mean I’m yours to do with as you please!”

Emma looked at her as though she were speaking Hebrew, for all the good Regina’s words did her. Features a conflicting mask of anger and confusion, Emma brutally grabbed the hem of Regina’s t-shirt, pulling on it to accent her point. “Then what the hell are you doing? Why are you—if you… if you don’t fucking _want—_ ”

Regina felt her cheeks involuntary flush and she shoved Emma’s hand away from her before snapping, “I’m _missing_ you, or is that not allowed now?” Emma still looked at her as though she wasn’t comprehending anything that she was saying however, and Regina exhaled an impatient sigh. “Just because I want you back, does _not_ mean that I’ll take it in any way I can get it. Is that clear enough for you? Because you’re looking at me as though I have three heads right now, and I don’t understand how you can’t—”

“I don’t understand because that’s all we’ve _ever_ done, Regina!” Emma exclaimed, her words slurring a bit as they came out bitter and angry. 

Regina hated how lost the blonde looked, as she should have known better than to have this conversation when Emma’s comprehension skills were severely impaired. But it had been so long since she had seen her, so long since they had spoken, that Regina took what she could get; which probably did nothing but further Emma’s confusion on why she wouldn’t do that when it came to having a relationship based on lies, if that was the only thing being offered to her.

But that was _different._ That was… the price, it was too high. Regina had lived so much of her life being unhappy, and perhaps she always would be without Emma, but cursing herself into that kind of relationship would be far worse than never having one at all, she was sure of it.

“This, _us…_ ” Emma breathed, sliding her hands underneath Regina’s night shirt, feeling the tautness of her muscles and the smoothness of her skin. Her lips brushed against Regina’s neck, causing the brunette to inhale a sharp breath. “It’s all been bullshit, hasn’t it? We just _pretend…_ ”

Anger flashed in Regina’s eyes and she shoved Emma away from her forcefully. “Don’t you _dare_ say that!” She didn’t care _how_ inebriated Emma was in that moment; that was just downright insulting. “Don’t you fucking dare reduce it to nothing more than—!”

“What the hell would you call it then?!” Emma shouted, cutting her off mid-sentence, a fire blazing deep within her gaze. “We played _house_ , Regina! We wrapped ourselves up in such _bullshit_ , when we both knew that neither of us could ever really have something like that! So what the hell does it matter, really, how we stay together? Because of this True Love crap it’s not like we have a choice, so why can’t we just—!”

“You drunken, _idiotic_ child,” Regina spat, her patience for Emma’s inebriated state having run out the moment she belittled the most honest thing she had ever felt for another human being. “Are you even thinking before you speak, or is your mouth running solely on the whiskey you drowned yourself in earlier? _Pull yourself together._ This is terribly pathetic, even for you; and believe me, dear, ever since I met you, you’ve set the bar _unbelievably_ high.”

Regina knew that was really uncalled for, but she was _furious._ She wanted nothing more than to work things out with Emma, but the woman that stood before her wasn’t _her_ Emma; just some pale, broken image of the woman she once was. She was falling apart, not _fighting_ to keep her head above water throughout all this madness. Emma desperately needed her strength back, and Regina knew, from personal experience, that anger… well, that was the strongest emotion of them all, when love was nowhere to be found.

So she pushed her… and Emma snapped.

The Sherriff pinned Regina to the wall, the force of her body colliding with hers nearly knocking the breath from the brunette’s lungs. Emma snarled at her, placing the edge of her forearm against Regina’s throat as she pressed down, fire igniting behind her sapphire eyes as she stared the woman down like a starving predator. 

“Do you want me to hurt you, is _that_ it?” she shouted, looking like a lost pawn amongst the world’s largest chess board. “Has the masochist in you come out to play, Regina?” Emma’s fingernails dug painfully into the skin of her hip, just above the line of panties. Her chest was heaving, her eyes wild. “I don’t know what the _fuck_ it is that you want from me!”

“No, dear,” Regina gasped out, the pressure on her throat making words harder to come by. “You know exactly what it is I want from you; it’s _you_ who doesn’t know what you want from _me._ ”

She had hit some kind of nerve, struck some cord of truth, and Emma had no words of reply. She may have been angry, she may have been drunk, but Regina still noticed how conflicted she was from the moment she stepped inside of her home. Emma grasped for her then pushed her away, unable to find the answers she had been so desperately searching for as she continued to repeat the vicious cycle of indecision. 

Until, finally, after moments of heavy breathing and an increasingly forceful grip, Emma misread every signal that Regina was giving her, and made the wrong decision.

The arm was ripped away from Regina’s throat, Emma’s hands grasping for her face instead as she crashed their lips together. The kiss was sloppy, desperate and violent, as teeth clashed together and tongues fought for the control that neither of them would ever really own. Regina whimpered, the sound emitting from the back of her throat without permission as she felt Emma’s hands fall beneath her shirt, raking her nails upwards until firm hands kneaded the fullness of her breasts.

Regina tried to speak, tried to tell Emma that this was going to do nothing but make everything so much worse, but the words died in her throat as the blonde’s mouth found her jugular. Emma bit down and Regina gasped, fingernails scraping helplessly against porcelain skin as her eyes hooded and her body fell against the wall. The submission in her was instinctual, yet her brain screamed for sense, as it was clear Emma had none of her own in that moment.

“Emma, stop it,” Regina gasped finally, the words sounding almost painful to utter by how badly her body ached for the other woman’s touch. But this wasn’t what Emma needed, and Regina couldn’t stomach taking advantage of how broken she was; that would be incredibly self-serving and cruel, even for her. If they were ever going to do this again, Emma needed to be sober.

However, the blonde merely laughed at her words, the sound vibrating against Regina’s silken skin. “You wanna play games?” she purred, the words resonating with the dominance she so desperately craved over the woman who had caused all of this madness. Her eyes snapped to hers, a challenge brewing behind them. “ _Fine,_ ” Emma sneered against her lips. “We’ll play.”

Before Regina could register what happened, suddenly her wrists were locked in a death grip, her arms being pinned to the wall as Emma dropped to her knees before her. “ _Emma!_ Regina shouted, fighting against her grip as she tried to get some sense through her head. “I said _stop!_ ”

“Wouldn’t be the first time you told me that,” Emma responded with a heavy chuckle, still thinking this was all some sort of damn _game._ But Regina was quite serious, and was starting to feel the magic spark to life again within her, the instinctual need to protect herself becoming more predominant than anything else in that moment. She didn’t really think Emma would hurt her, at least not intentionally, but she wasn’t thinking clearly right then, and that worried Regina.

Still, the explosion she was expecting didn’t come. Regina gasped as she felt Emma’s mouth cover the damp material of her panties, and her hips pushed towards her without thought. Still, though her body wanted one thing, her brain wanted another, and that was the dominant factor throughout this chaos. It startled Regina, to feel the magic coursing through her, and realize that it hadn’t yet pushed outward because she hadn’t allowed it to. 

She was _controlling_ it.

“I will give you five _damn_ seconds to let me go, or so help me…” Regina growled, wanting the other woman to realize how serious she was before she was forced to hurt her. Emma, however, still drunk and mind-numbingly _stupid_ as to what was really happening around her, merely smirked.

“Or _what,_ Regina? You’re not exactly in a position to be making threats.” 

Snarling with fury over how idiotic Emma could be, Regina locked her eyes on her target before opening her palms, pushing her magic outwards with such strength that it violently collided with Emma’s chest, sending her sprawling across the foyer floor. Emma coughed, struggling to breathe as Regina pushed herself off the wall, angrily straightening out her disheveled clothing as she stared down the woman who had violated her.

“We’ve never had a safe word, you stupid, _insolent_ little cretin,” she spat. “I don’t care _how_ drunk you are, use your fucking head! When I say stop, that means _stop!_ That wasn’t some damn _game!_ ”

Emma still lay on the floor, her eyes widening as she took in the pure fury that was etched on Regina’s face. She looked like she was going to be ill. “I…” she tried, but words failed her. All of them except the whispered, distraught realization of, “Oh _god…_ ” as she finally saw, throughout her haze of alcohol and desperation, that she had done something terribly wrong.

“Get up,” Regina ordered, hand reaching towards Emma’s arm in a flash as she violently pulled the other woman to her feet. Emma stumbled, and was barely able to get her bearings before Regina reared back and slapped her hard across the cheek. Emma hissed in pain and grasped for her stinging flesh, yet did not lash out, knowing she deserved at least that much. “You’re a fucking mess,” Regina told her, tone uncaring as she told Emma the ugly truth. “And I want my _damn_ son back.”

“Regina…” Emma tried, but was cut off in an instant.

“ _No,_ I’m not going to cater to your mental breakdown anymore just because I feel guilty for having caused it,” Regina snapped. “I don’t even know who you _are_ right now. You’re nothing but a pathetic imitation of the woman I fell in love with, and I will not have my son around to witness you falling to fucking pieces.”

“ _Our_ son,” Emma corrected automatically, the argument almost instinctual at this point. Regina just laughed bitterly at the claim.

“When you start acting like a parent again, you can have that right back. Until then, he’s mine.” Emma tried to say something, but Regina wouldn’t give her the chance. “Do you think I didn’t notice, the moment you walked in here, how haggard you were? You looked like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week, like it’s all one big fucking hangover for you. What the hell kind of environment is that for a _child,_ Emma? For Christ’s sake!”

What had transpired between them had, thankfully, seemed to sober Emma up enough to at least look ashamed of herself. Pushing the hair back from her face, the blonde averted her eyes. “Look, Regina, I…” She swallowed hard, distress crossing over her features. “I am _so_ sorry. I didn’t—I mean, I-I just thought…”

“I know what you thought,” Regina snapped, knowing Emma was still hung up on the line she had been dangerously close to crossing. “And believe me, if it wasn’t for the kind of sex we used to have, and the fact that I know you genuinely didn’t mean me any harm – at least in that way – I would have flayed you _alive_ for what you tried to do. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Emma said quietly, still unable to look her in the eye. The amount of self-loathing the woman had for herself curled off her like smoke, but Regina felt no need to try to dissipate it. Emma needed to learn this lesson, and preferably the hard way, as it seemed to be the only time anything ever stuck with her.

“ _Good,_ ” Regina snarled, before taking a deep breath to try to calm herself, straightening her spine in an attempt to feel a little more put together. “Now, about my son…”

“Regina, I… I can’t bring him here,” Emma told her, words coming out practically mumbled and apologetic. She took a hesitant breath, trying to gather up her courage, before catching the brunette’s eye with her own. “You know it’s not safe. Some of the townspeople—”

“I am _not_ leaving him with you,” Regina told her fiercely. “You can barely take care of yourself, let alone a child right now.”

“Alright, _fine!_ ” Emma exclaimed, unable to allow the painful truths to continue. She wrenched herself away from her, beginning to pace. “I’m in a bad place, okay, _I got it!_ You don’t have to shove it down my throat, Regina. For fuck’s sake. I’ll have David and Mary Margaret watch him if you don’t trust me enough, but that’s the best I can offer you, because you _know_ he can’t be here.”

Regina’s eyes flashed, not liking the idea of _Snow White_ taking care of Henry, but in the end, it was their only option and they knew it. He couldn’t stay at the manor, and he _certainly_ couldn’t be Emma’s responsibility right now. She had already proved in a rather vivid manner how completely incompetent she was when she let her emotions consume her sanity, and Henry did _not_ need to be around to witness his birthmother breaking in half.

“Fine,” Regina replied shortly. There was a few beats of silence as Regina’s eyes swept over the Sherriff, watching the woman fight the urge not to dwell on her prior forceful actions. It seemed Emma was losing the battle rather substantially however, and Regina sighed. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Yeah,” Emma quietly agreed, staring at the ground as she dug the toe of her boot into the grout. But yet, she didn’t move. Regina stared at her for a few moments before Emma finally looked up at her, eyes still swimming with regret, and tried once more with, “Regina…”

“I know,” Regina said softly, already aware of what exactly was going through the other woman’s mind. “I know you are, Emma, and it’s done. Just go home and get some sleep.”

Emma nodded and took a deep breath, covering her face with her hands before running them downwards as she exhaled, trying to fight the haze in her mind that the alcohol had caused. But it was when they slipped from her face and Regina saw the first tear roll down Emma’s cheek, that she realized why it was that the woman believed she needed to drink. She didn’t want to feel _this._

“Emma…” The name sounded painful falling from her lips, Regina’s heart clenching in her chest as she no longer saw anger, nor confusion, but pure sorrow etched across the other woman’s face.

Emma violently wiped the evidence of her upset from her cheeks, yet even as she did, another tear slid down her pale skin. “Fuck,” she breathed, looking up at Regina helplessly. “It’s always going to hurt like this, isn’t it…?”

Regina pursed her lips, trying to get ahold of her own emotions. She didn’t reach for her, although her body yearned to wrap Emma up in a comforting embrace. They needed space though, after everything that had happened, and so she stood her ground, wishing she had something other to say than the truth. “Probably,” she whispered, her tone apologetic and soft.

“I thought… I thought that maybe if we just _pretend…_ ” Emma exhaled a long sigh, shaking her head as she turned away from her. She looked as though she felt foolish, yet still finished softly with, “We used to be good at that… you know?” 

“No, we weren’t,” Regina disagreed, causing Emma to turn back towards her in question. The brunette gave her a small, sad smile, before gently reminding her, “If we were, we would have never ended up here.”

Emma scoffed at that, a disbelieving chuckle falling from her lips as she furiously wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “I thought we were _destiny…_ ” She said the word like it was something foul, and Regina tried like hell to not let that emotionally affect her. It was difficult.

“Destiny is the destination, dear,” Regina answered softly. “We just happened to have taken the wrong path to get there.”

Emma swallowed hard, accepting her words as truth. There was a long moment’s silence, before Emma’s cracked and heavy words sought to damage Regina’s heart a little further. “I can’t be with you.” It sounded apologetic, but it was still firm, and it made the brunette turn her face away from her, not wanting Emma to see the tears brewing in the back of her eyes.

“I know.”

A silence followed; long, heavy.

“I just… god, I just want everything to go back to how it _was,_ ” Emma whispered finally, sounding so terribly pained by the fact that she would never again feel the comfort that love was supposed to allot her. It was clear she couldn’t bring herself to leave just yet, and if truth be told, Regina didn’t want her to. They were grasping at straws, perhaps; but as it was all they had, they hastily reached for them anyway. 

“Please,” Regina implored, breaking her own rule as she reached for Emma’s hand. The blonde’s desperation to forget scared her, and she felt she had to say something. Regina knew she would regret it if she did not. “Don’t… _please_ don’t do anything rash.”

Emma looked down at their clasped hands for a moment before slowly pulling away, folding her arms into herself as she took a step backwards. “I’m not going to take the potion,” she told her. “If that’s what you’re worried about. Besides, I… honestly, I don’t even know if it can be made here. Magic is…” But then she stopped mid-sentence, her eyes snapping up to meet Regina’s as she realized something. “You used magic. Earlier, you—!”

Damn. Regina had been hoping she was too inebriated to notice.

“It’s been happening off and on,” she reluctantly admitted, knowing better than to lie about it when Emma had clearly already seen. Regina just hoped she wouldn’t be trudged off to that damn cell again for it, as it was both terribly uncomfortable and undignified. “I still can’t… _fully_ control it. It comes and goes, like waves.”

Emma sighed heavily, looking as though that information burdened her and she very much did _not_ want to deal with it right now. “I don’t… _damnit._ You know no one’s going to like that you have access to magic, right?”

“Then don’t tell anyone,” Regina implored, stepping closer to her. “Please. You know it’ll only cause panic.”

Emma chewed on the inside of her cheek, looking at Regina apprehensively. Shaking her head, she exhaled a long breath as she asked, “But how am I supposed to trust that you’re not going to… I don’t know, fuck some _more_ shit up with it? I mean come on, Regina, you already cursed—!”

“Emma,” Regina interrupted firmly. “I swear on Henry’s _life_ that I won’t.”

That gave Emma pause, knowing Regina would never say something like that unless she truly meant it. It relieved some of her concern, and Regina watched Emma’s muscles loosen as she relaxed a little. “Okay,” she conceded softly, although she still sounded a little wary. Still, she pressed on with a firm, “Just don’t make me regret it.”

The plea was more than just about magic, and Regina knew it. Emma was taking a chance with trusting her, and even though it wasn’t anything to do with _them_ personally, and where they were or weren’t in their relationship, it was still a step in the right direction, and Regina would be _damned_ if she was going to screw that up.

So she caught her eye, needing Emma to see the honesty in her gaze, as she swore to her, “I won’t.”

**TBC…**


	8. Running

**CHAPTER EIGHT  
Running**

“What are you doing?”

Emma looked up in surprise, her movements halted by the sound of the unexpected voice. Mary Margaret stood in the doorway, staring at the half-packed bag at the base of Emma’s bed, looking as though the mere sight of it cut her heart into pieces. Emma averted her eyes, shoving another pair of jeans into the open duffle.

“Thought you were at that meeting… thing.” The blonde’s words came out a mumble, suppressed by the shame of being caught.

“The one _you_ were supposed to attend with us?” Mary Margaret asked, her tone sharp. “Yes, we were. It’s finished.” Her eyes swept the bed, noting the articles of clothing that were scattered in disarray across the bed sheets. Emma avoided her gaze as she swiped for a tank top that had fallen to the floor. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Emma. _What are you doing?_ ”

Emma exhaled an impatient breath as she shoved the shirt into the bag. “Drop the whole cliché mom tone, Mary Margaret. I’m an adult; this is me making an _adult_ decision.”

“To what, _leave?_ ” Mary Margaret practically shrieked, horrified by the choice Emma was making. She took a few steps towards her, palms held out in an imploring manner as desperation shone behind her forest green eyes. “Emma, sweetie, I know things have been hard for you, but you can’t just—!”

“I’m not leaving town or anything!” Emma exclaimed, looking up at her with an expression of disbelief. “ _Jesus,_ is that what you really think?” She might be a mess right now, but she wasn’t heartless. Emma shook her head, irritated by Mary Margaret’s lack of confidence in her, while she shoved another article of clothing into the open bag. “I’m just—I… I need to be away from Henry right now, okay? I’m gonna go stay at the Bed and Breakfast for a bit, that’s _all_.”

“Without saying a word to your father and I?” Mary Margaret asked, looking at Emma like she couldn’t fathom how her decision making skills worked. “You were just going to dump your son on us and _expect—?_ ”

“I was going to leave a note,” Emma grumbled, pushing her hair back from her eyes. Her fingers caught in a tangle – further proof that she could barely even take care of her own basic maintenance, let alone a child right now – and she sighed heavily as she forced her hand violently away from her head, nearly tearing out some of her hair in the process. “I just didn’t want to have this conversation, alright? Was trying to avoid it.”

Mary Margaret set her jaw, looking really unhappy about this unexpected turn of events. After a long moment’s silence she spoke, her voice almost dangerously low as she asked, “Did _Regina_ tell you to do this?”

God, even the mere _mention_ of Regina’s name twisted her insides violently. 

What she had almost done at the manor, it… Emma could barely even look at herself in the mirror that morning, her reflection sickened her that badly. It had been an honest mistake, to have interpreted Regina’s response in the wrong way, but that still didn’t justify her actions by any means. She was a disaster, and that happening, above all else, proved it to be true with blinding clarity.

Still, Emma paused mid-movement, blinking in surprise. She hadn’t expected Mary Margaret to know that. “How did you…?”

“Mulan told your father that you were at her house last night.”

God damnit. Was she not allowed even a second’s privacy? For fuck’s sake, this was ridiculous. She didn’t need _babysitters;_ she was a grown woman.

Emma threw another article of clothing into the bag. “Look, it _really_ doesn’t matter—”

“Of course it matters!” Mary Margaret exclaimed, crossing the room to practically manhandle the duffle away from her daughter. Emma shot her a glare, furiously holding out her hands in disbelief; she was being treated like her opinion didn’t even matter, and it was beyond frustrating. “Emma, she’s only saying this so she can get him back! Why are you succumbing to her ridiculous requests? Honestly, I would have thought—”

“Because they’re _not_ ridiculous, Mary Margaret!” Emma shouted, effectively cutting the other woman off. “She’s right, okay? I’m a fucking mess! I can’t be the mom Henry needs right now, and you know it! Just because you don’t want to acknowledge the fact that I’m drinking myself into an early grave, doesn’t mean it’s not happening! So just let me deal with my shit the way I need to, _alright?!_ ”

Mary Margaret stared at her, distress beginning to mask over her delicate features at the truth she had so desperately wished to ignore. But it was staring her in the face now, and there was no longer a way to cover the ugliness of it back up. She took a hesitant breath. “Emma, if you… if you need _help,_ maybe we could—”

“I don’t need help, I just need _space,_ ” Emma snapped, tearing the bag out of the other woman’s grasp before setting it on the bed once more. She began shoving clothes in it again, not really caring about a sense of order to the madness. “So just let me have it so I can start dealing, alright? I have enough going on without some ‘and they lived happily ever after’ Disney _crap_ being shoved in my face every two seconds.”

“Oh.” Mary Margaret looked wounded by her words. “You… you mean that you need space from David and I as well, don’t you? Is that what you’re…?”

Emma sighed heavily, beginning to feel guilty by the way her intoxicated disposition expressed her frustrations. “It’s just a lot to take in at once,” Emma admitted softly, avoiding eye contact as she finished packing her things. “I spent my entire life convinced that my parents abandoned me because they couldn’t give a shit, and then the damn curse lifts and suddenly you expect me to play happy family?” 

Emma looked up, face masking in apology at how upset her former friend was becoming. “I just… it’s gonna take some time for me to process everything,” she continued, her tone softer and more caring this time around. “It’s not every day you find out you were sent through a magical wardrobe to save a bunch of fairytale characters, you know? It’d fuck with anyone. I’m not…” Emma sighed heavily as she zipped up the duffle, “I’m not _saying_ that I’m not glad to have found you guys, but there’s still a lot of crap I gotta work through before we can, I don’t know, move _forward_ , or whatever. You… you get that, right?”

“N-No… I mean, _yes_ , of course, I— _we_ understand that, Emma. We just… I mean—” But Mary Margaret cut herself off, her emotions getting the better of her. Fresh tears shone in her eyes, but she turned away from Emma before allowing them to fall. Still, the blonde noticed.

A sharp pang of guilt shot through her gut, causing Emma to take a step towards her. “Mary Margaret…”

“I’m sorry,” the brunette apologized, quickly wiping the evidence of her distress off her cheeks. “I know you don’t need this right now. I’m not trying to guilt you into staying; I know why you need to leave. I’m just worried that…”

“That what?” Emma gently prodded.

Mary Margaret exhaled a long sigh, shaking her head for a moment before turning towards her. “I’m worried that you’re just _running,_ Emma, not dealing,” she told her softly. “I’m afraid that once you get there, you’ll no longer have any reason to hide what you’re doing. What if you just begin to drink _more?_ ”

“I won’t. I still have a job to do—”

“And yet where were you today, during the town meeting?” Mary Margaret pressed, furthering her point. As Sherriff of Storybrooke, she should have been present. “Emma, we were discussing what to do with Regina today; I would have _thought_ you’d want to be around for that, yet you were nowhere to be found.”

Emma blinked at the new information; had someone informed her of that earlier? She couldn’t remember anyone saying anything about it. If she had known, she would have gone. 

God, she hoped she wasn’t blacking out.

“You… I thought—Wasn’t it going to be awhile until her trial?” she asked, confused. “Why were you guys talking about that _now_ when there’s other—”

“Emma,” Mary Margaret interrupted. “There isn’t going to be a trial. Regina already admitted her guilt; all that’s left is to sentence her. With everything going on, we figured it was best to just get this out of the way, that way we can focus on other—”

“So wait, when the _hell_ is this supposed to be happening?” Emma cut in, looking completely lost. She had thought there would be more time to deal with the whole Regina situation, but apparently not. Mary Margaret sighed softly, sympathetically.

“In two days.”

Emma felt herself slump onto the bed heavily. Two days? She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about that. It kind of made her feel numb. 

“They’re not… I mean, you guys aren’t going to sentence her to _death_ or anything… right?” She looked up at the woman standing beside her, knowing her eyes were begging for Mary Margaret to ease her worries. Regina might be a lot of things, might have _done_ a lot of things, but the last thing Emma wanted was for her to die for it.

Still, things were very different where they came from, and that scared her. 

“Of course we’re not,” Mary Margaret assured her, coming to sit next to Emma on the bed. She placed a comforting hand on her knee. “We’re not barbaric, Emma; she’s Henry’s adoptive mother. We couldn’t do something like that to him. But she… well, we think it would be best for Regina, and the town as a whole, for her to not be around any longer. It hasn’t officially been decided yet, but your father and I believe banishment would be the punishment best suited for her crimes.”

Emma turned towards her sharply. “What about Henry?”

“What about him? I just said—”

“We’re just going to let Regina up and disappear with him?” Emma asked, looking at her like she was insane. “He’s my son too! I know I might be a disaster right now, but I can’t—!”

“What? _No,_ Emma!” Mary Margaret hastily assured her. “No, of course not; Henry will stay here, with _us._ ”

Emma blinked at her, trying to process the lack of sense that just came out of the other woman’s mouth. “What?” she asked, disbelief settling over her expression. “What the hell are you talking about? Regina is Henry’s legal guardian, Mary Margaret. We don’t have any right to him, not _really._ We can’t just toss her out without him, that’s… I don’t know, _illegal_ , on top of really fucked up.”

“Storybrooke isn’t connected to the rest of the world, Emma,” Mary Margaret reminded her. “Things are very different here, and as such we aren’t governed by the same set of laws. We’ll award custody of Henry to you during sentencing, and then—”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Emma muttered furiously, pushing herself off the bed to pace. Just because her parents were monarchs in their world, didn’t give them the right to dictate everyone else’s lives while in Storybrooke. Emma didn’t want Regina leaving with Henry, not by any means, but this still didn’t sit right with her. This wasn’t the way the world _worked._

Mary Margaret, sensing her daughter’s unrest with the situation, tried to rectify it. “If it means that much to you, we can… I don’t know, perhaps organize supervised visits one weekend a month, or something…”

“If it means _that much_ to me?” Emma repeated, rounding on her furiously. “This isn’t even _about_ me; this is about you separating a child from their mother, without even really thinking about what this is going to do to Henry! Look, the last thing I want is to be around Regina, because all it does it fuck me up more, but Christ, you can’t just go around dictating shit like this without even thinking it through! Damn _right_ she should be allowed supervised visits, at the very least; can you even imagine how badly it’s going to hurt Henry if he’s never allowed to see her again?!”

Mary Margaret’s previously understanding gaze darkened at the blonde’s tone. “Emma, Regina is _evil._ I understand why you would think separating Henry from her wouldn’t be the right thing to do, but you have to see that maybe it’s—”

“Regina’s not _evil_ , Mary Margaret! She’s a self-centered, manipulative bitch with impulse issues, who still, at the end of the goddamn day, loves her _son_ more than anything else in this world.”

 _Even more than me,_ a small voice in the back of Emma’s head added, yet thankfully the words did not make their way out of her mouth. She didn’t want to think of Regina’s feelings for her at the moment, as they were irrelevant when it came to the situation at hand.

“Someone doing evil _things_ does not make them inherently evil, alright? She wouldn’t love as devotedly as she does if that were true, so stop labeling her that just to make yourself feel better for not giving a fuck about how our kid will feel about your decision.”

Mary Margaret’s mouth dropped open, horrified by the way her daughter was speaking to her. “ _Emma!_ ”

“No, we’re done,” Emma snapped, furiously grabbing her duffle off the bed and hoisting it over her shoulder. “Call me when the town reconvenes for sentencing. Until then, just… just leave me alone.”

Mary Margaret tried to call out to her, but Emma stormed out of her bedroom, hearing none of it. While Regina being banished from Storybrooke gave them the space they both so desperately needed – especially after the unfortunate events that had transpired between them at the manor – the fact that Mary Margaret barely thought about Henry throughout all of it enraged her. It wasn’t fair, and it most certainly wasn’t _right._

And Emma just hoped that, at the end of the day, Mary Margaret would see that, and not give Henry any reason to despise them and the end result of the curse he had worked so tirelessly to break.

[x]

_Light. Light, damn you!_

For the umpteenth time that day however, nothing happened.

Regina exhaled an impatient sigh, beginning to grow incredibly frustrated by the lack of progress she was making. Magic was fueled by emotion, but it seemed to only respond in this realm to strong, uncontrollable ones, which was not making things any easier for her. Magic was dangerous when one was unable to control it, and that was not something Regina wanted her son around. So with that goal in mind, she sat in the large armchair in her study for seemingly hours on end, attempting to figure out the secret to accessing it.

Regardless of Rumpelstiltskin’s theory that the curse broke wrong, Regina _refused_ to believe that it meant magic was inaccessible on a whim. After all, there _had_ been times when she had been able to control it; they were just few and far between.

She just couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out the connection between the two events.

At first she believed it was because she was protecting herself both times, but if that were true, Regina should have been able to summon a protection ward when the mob first came to her door. However, she was not, so that theory ended up being dismissed rather quickly. It was frustrating though, because outside of that, the two events were completely dissimilar; different circumstances and different spells.

Regina took a deep breath, focusing her gaze on the candle before her once more. It was aggravating, how mind-numbingly _simple_ this spell once was for her, and yet now it had become one of the most difficult things she had ever tried to accomplish, solely because she could no longer access what used to be second-nature to her.

Regina stared. She concentrated. She focused on her desire to protect Henry, for without control over herself she was a danger. And yet still, nothing happened.

“God damnit, just _light!_ ” she exclaimed, frustrated beyond belief at the cylinder of wax that now seemed to be taunting her with just its mere existence. Aggravated, Regina slammed her hand down on the table, knocking the candle onto the floor just as her magic sparked and raged inside of her, reacting to her anger.

The vase of flowers in the corner of the room erupted into flames, and Regina swore loudly.

Luckily, she had been prepared for potential accidents, but that still didn’t worry her any less, considering the flowers were _dangerously_ close to her drapes. Jumping up, Regina grabbed the pitcher of water off her desk, throwing it onto the flames. The fire hissed as it was put out, leaving a charred mess of what used to be a lovely bouquet of lilies in its wake. Regina sighed, leaning heavily against the side of her desk.

She was getting nowhere.

If she wanted to learn how to control magic in this world, she really needed to figure out the connection between the only two times she was able. However, Regina had always been more of a doer than a thinker, so she didn’t have much faith in her patience to really sit down and suss it out. Still, she knew she had to try.

When Regina crossed the room to pour herself a stiff glass of hard cider though, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she noticed a body coming to stand in the threshold of the door. Her irritation at everyone’s ability and audacity to just _stroll right into her house_ uninvited, however, dissipated in an instant when she realized who it was that had come to see her.

Eyes widening as they glassed over with emotion, Regina abandoned all thoughts of magic as she looked upon her son, hardly able to believe it that he was really there. She had thought for sure no one would condone him seeing her. “Henry…”

The boy smiled wide. “Mom!”

He was in her arms within moments, enveloping her in a crushing hug. Regina clung to him, smoothing down his hair and kissing his forehead as the feeling of her son’s love overwhelmed her. After everything that had happened, Regina would have never expected him to greet her so warmly. It seemed, however, that Henry was the only person who could see how much Emma’s love had changed her. Perhaps it was mostly blind faith on his part, a hope for a happily ever after, but it was still nice to know that there was someone in this world that believed she was more than the sum of her mistakes.

“What are you doing here?” Regina asked, kneeling before him to get at his eyelevel as she smoothed out the crinkles in his shirt. “Did Emma bring you?”

Henry squished his face to the side in guilt before reluctantly shaking his head. “I snuck out,” he admitted softly.

“Henry…” Regina’s words were laced with disapproval, but Henry wouldn’t let her lecture him.

“No one would let me see you!” he exclaimed. “It wasn’t fair. I know you’re not going to hurt me, because you’re not the Evil Queen anymore. You’re just my mom. Why doesn’t anyone see that?”

Regina’s face etched in distress at the innocence in her son’s words. “Is that… they really believe I would do that; _hurt_ you?” She expected as much of Snow, but not of _Emma._ The woman knew that Regina lived and breathed only for Henry; he was the reason that she stayed here, in this house, awaiting sentencing for her crimes, despite how easy it would be for her to flee with only one guard stationed at the front door.

Regina couldn’t leave without him. And now that Henry was here, she had half a mind to just take him and go, but in the end, she had done so much wrong by Emma already; she couldn’t betray her by snatching their son and leaving town, especially considering that with the border problem, there would be no way back.

“I don’t know. I think so. I know before Emma didn’t want me to see you in jail, but you’re out now, so…” Henry shrugged, not really knowing all of the details of their forced separation. 

Regina exhaled a soft breath before pursing her lips together and giving her son a tight smile. She was glad to see him, but that still didn’t mean she condoned his behavior. “You shouldn’t have come here,” she told him softly. “Emma will be worried sick once she realizes you’re gone.”

Henry shook his head. “No, she ran away this morning.”

“… _What?_ ”

“To the inn,” Henry hastily assured her, realizing how that sounded a little too late. “But I overheard Grandma telling her that she was running from things instead of fixing them. I don’t know. She promised me she’d be back soon though, she just doesn’t know when.”

So Emma had actually listened to her. If Regina were to be honest, she would have never expected her to; especially considering the state the blonde was in.

“Emma’s been having a tough time lately,” Regina told him gently, smoothing down the cowlick in his hair. “But if she promised she’d come back, then she will, okay? She just needs some alone time right now.”

“Because of the drinking,” Henry finished, and four little words had never crushed Regina so quickly. Suddenly he seemed so much older, his innocence and naivety stolen from the repercussions of her own mistake. They were just words, holding no real power to age him, and yet suddenly her little boy didn’t seem so little anymore.

Regina gave him a sad smile. “Your…” there was only a slight hesitation before she continued with, “your _mom_ , Henry; she’s very strong. But even the strongest people have moments of weakness, because it’s human to be imperfect. This is hers. But no matter how bad it is, you have to remember that it’s a _moment_ … and moments, they eventually pass.”

Henry’s lips upturned into a smile. “You called Emma my mom.”

It was the first time Regina had ever really referred to Emma as such in front of her son, and she met his smile with one of her own. “I think,” she began softly, brushing the hair out of his eyes, “I’ve begun to learn the concept of sharing.” Henry smirked, and it was reflected back at him. “I suppose it’s not that bad.”

Her words elicited a sense of happiness in her son, but within moments it was gone, his expression clouding over as he looked down at his shoes. “I thought we were going to be a family,” he admitted softly. “True Love is supposed to give people their happy endings, isn’t it?”

Henry’s words broke her heart, and Regina tried like hell to not let the emotion show on her face, for fear of crushing his hopes even further with her own pessimism. “Emma and I love you,” she told him firmly. “And no matter what happens between us, that’s never going to change. But I’ve… I’ve done quite a lot of bad things in my life, and while you seem to be able to separate the person that I was from the person that I am now, it’s not that easy for everyone else. Maybe, in time, Emma will be able to forgive me for the things that I’ve done, but if it happens, it probably won’t be for quite a while.”

“Because your curse took her from her mom and dad,” Henry said quietly, trying to understand why there was such a large rift between his two mothers, despite how much had changed before. “And cause you lied.”

“Yes,” Regina quietly agreed. “Among many other things.” Graham, in particular, being another large part of Emma’s anger towards her. But that was a conversation for another day.

Henry took a breath, shuffling his feet for a moment. “You made me feel like I was crazy,” he told her hesitantly, as if he was unsure about bringing it up on top of everything else that was going on. “And I know it was because you were evil at first, then when you started to love Emma you were scared about her finding out, but… I hated it, Mom. I’m not crazy, and you _knew_ I wasn’t.”

“I know,” Regina softly replied, guilt washing over her features. “I know, honey, and I’m sorry. I thought it was best if you believed it was just your imagination. I thought if you knew, I would lose you; that you would hate me.”

“I did… for a little,” Henry admitted, unable to meet her eye. “But… then you found your True Love and you changed. I just… I want us all to be happy, Mom.” He sounded so small, once again no more than the little boy Regina had read bedtime stories to for so many years, and it broke her heart for being the one to have caused him such distress.

How foolish she had been, to believe that this story could possibly have a happy ending.

Still, she assured him, “We will be, Henry. I promise. One day, everything will be alright. It might take a little while, but this is just another moment. It’ll eventually pass, and a new one will come; a happier one.”

“How can you be sure?”

Regina smiled at him, gently tapping her knuckle against his chin. “Because fairytales always have happy endings, don’t they?” It was an answer that went against everything she herself believed in, yet Regina felt she had to say it. She didn’t want her son to live with the same pessimism that devoured her whole. He deserved to have hope.

Henry smiled, then nodded. 

But within moments his expression clouded over once more as he told her, “I don’t want you to have to leave.”

Regina’s eyebrows knitted. “What do you mean? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Emma was yelling at Grandma earlier about it,” Henry said, his voice soft, as though he knew he shouldn’t have been spying, “before she left. They’re going to make you leave Storybrooke because you cast the curse.”

Regina felt all the color drain from her face at that information. “…What?” The word was barely above a whisper. Leaving Storybrooke, with the boundary still intact, meant she could never return. Did Snow _know_ that?

It seemed though, at the very least, that Henry didn’t.

“Emma was mad about it, but I don’t think Grandma cares. She said we could still see each other, but I don’t think she’s going to let me live with you.”

It took every ounce of strength inside of Regina to not break down. She didn’t want to scare Henry, especially when she was unsure of the facts; it was possible her son had misinterpreted Snow’s words, or that Emma was completely unaware of the boundary issue. Despite everything, Regina knew that Emma would never condone her being separated from Henry in such a way.

But in the end, did Emma’s opinion on it even matter? She was the Sherriff, yes, but it seemed Snow and David had reinstated themselves as reigning monarchs. They could throw her out of Storybrooke despite Emma’s protests, if they so desired.

God, that scared her.

Regina knew she looked alarmed by this information, but that was something she couldn’t help. She at least suppressed the worst of her fear, knowing it would do no good to get Henry riled up about it as well. She ran her hands down her son’s arms in a comforting gesture. “Don’t worry about that right now, alright?” Regina tried, keeping her voice as level as possible. “I’ll speak with Emma about it, and if I need to, then I’ll have a word with Snow as well. No matter what, we’ll still be able to see each other. We’ll figure something out.”

“Okay,” Henry conceded quietly. Regina gave him an assuring smile, and he smiled back at her.

“Come on,” she encouraged, getting to her feet and placing a hand on the small of her son’s back. “I believe its Granny’s shift at the moment; let’s see if she’ll drive you back to Emma’s apartment. I don’t want you riding your bike back in the dark.”

 _Besides, I need to get you back home before Snow realizes you’re missing and accuses me of trying to kidnap you,_ Regina thought bitterly, yet did not allow the words to fall from her lips. In the end, she still felt the need to shield Henry from so many things. He was only ten years old and already he had gone through much more than a young boy should; Regina didn’t want to expose him to any more anger and spite, especially between the people who loved him.

She had made a lot of mistakes in her life, and look where they had gotten her. It was high time for Regina to try to make things right, however she was able, and no matter how hard the choices may be. Regina didn’t want to end up bitter and alone for the rest of her life; she had spent so long being miserable and angry, and for one, brief moment, she had felt true happiness.

And she wanted, more than anything else, to get that back. Everything else paled in comparison to feeling like she finally had a proper family.

Perhaps it was a foolish dream, especially after everything that had happened, but still Regina knew that one thing was for certain: she had to try. Because this, this life she had led for over thirty years? It wasn’t working any longer. She had believed revenge would fill the hole in her heart, but all it did was make it even bigger as she repeatedly darkened her soul.

Henry and Emma, _they_ were what filled that void, and Regina would be damned if she just allowed them to get away.

**TBC…**


	9. Sentencing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you guys are getting the chapter a day early this week since I'm gonna be on a six hour flight tomorrow and _really_ don't wanna have to figure out a time to post between packing and what have you, lol. Updates will resume on Wednesday after this week though.

**CHAPTER NINE  
Sentencing**

“Where is Emma? I need to speak with—must you do that so _roughly?_ ”

Regina was thrown rather unceremoniously into the singular cell in the Sherriff’s station, scowling at Charming’s lack of respect towards her. She might be a criminal in their eyes, but the fact that she had willingly stayed under house arrest when she could have easily slipped away from her singular guard, should have proven that she wasn’t about to do anything foolish. If she had wanted to avoid her fate, she could have left sometime during the middle of the night, not en route to her holding cell an hour prior to her sentencing. 

Then again, expecting Charming to have basic reasoning skills was perhaps far too much to hope for.

“She’s out on a call,” the man answered her as he shut the cell door, barely even sparing her more than a glance before he crossed the room to answer the phone that was ringing off the hook. It was clear he didn’t feel the need to care very much about Regina’s urgent insistence that she see Emma, but she was running out of _time._

If Emma had just bothered to answer her phone over the last two days this wouldn’t have been an issue, but each and every call was promptly ignored. Regina should have expected nothing else, but she had foolishly allowed herself to believe that perhaps Emma would realize and _care_ that she had something urgent to tell her while the woman’s cellphone rang nonstop for the last forty eight hours.

“Then I demand an audience with yourself and Snow, because this is—!” Regina tried, defaulting to her last resort. However, her words were promptly cut off as two figures entered the Sherriff’s station, one of them being Emma herself.

“You know, if you wanted to handcuff me that badly, love, I could’ve named a number of other scenarios that would’ve been far more… _pleasurable,_ ” Hook practically purred at her, effectively making Emma’s gaze darken as she shoved him over towards the cell.

“Keep it in your pants,” she growled, before her eyes set on Regina, who was occupying the cell which she no doubt was planning to keep Hook in. “Damnit,” Emma mumbled under her breath before turning towards her father. “David—”

“Just keep them in the same cell,” Charming told her as he hung up the phone, grabbing his jacket off of one of the desk chairs. “We’ll be moving Regina to City Hall in an hour anyway. I’m sure the two of them can manage to play nice until then.” He eyed both of the town ‘villains’ with distaste before heading towards the door.

“Where are you going?” Emma asked, looking a little frazzled at the amount of action the Sherriff’s station seemed to be getting that day; it looked like it was one thing after another.

“I just got a call about someone possibly seeing Jafar; I’m going to go check it out. Can you file the paperwork on Regina?”

But Charming didn’t even give her a chance to respond before he was out the door, leaving Emma with the two captives. She exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, sure, whatever,” she mumbled before opening the cell door with one of her keys. “Don’t kill each other,” Emma told them shortly as she threw Hook inside, locking the door behind him.

“Regina,” Hook greeted, a smirk tugging at the edge of his lips as he placed his back against the bars, allowing Emma to uncuff him through the obstruction. “It’s been _far_ too long.”

“Killian,” Regina responded shortly, eyeing the man up and down. “I dare say not long enough.”

“You wound me,” he responded satirically, his smirk growing wider. “And here I thought we had a special connection.” Leaning against the bars, Hook crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing her hungrily. “At least, we did the night before you sent me off to Wonderland to take care of your dear mother. Do you remember…?”

A horrified look crossed over Emma’s face at the implication. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she exclaimed, shoving Hook away from the bars so roughly that it made the man chuckle, sensing her innate jealousy that anyone had ever dared touch her ex. Regina was unsure whether the possessive nature was due to True Love or just a part of Emma’s personality, but she found she appreciated it all the same.

Still, Regina’s face darkened at the man’s audacity to mention _that_ sordid little affair in front of Emma; that was not something the other woman needed to hear. However, Regina still managed to keep herself poised as she responded with, “If you’re referring to the whole of five minutes you flopped around like a fish out of water in my bedchambers, then yes, I do. As I recall it was terribly disappointing.”

Hook’s smug look diminished immediately and, despite herself, Emma snorted at the insult.

Turning away from him, Regina’s gaze set on the blonde. “Emma, I need to speak with you; it’s urgent,” she pleaded, hoping the woman would implore her request. She really did not have much time left.

“Later,” Emma brushed off, sorting through the paperwork on her desk without even sparing the other woman a glance. Her voice held a bit of a tremor though, as if she were afraid Regina wished to speak with her about the things that had transpired between them in the manor a few days ago. But that was the last thing on Regina’s mind.

“There might not _be_ a later!” she exclaimed, which at least got Emma’s attention as she turned towards her. “Are you aware that your idiotic parents are planning to _banish_ me? The town line is still intact, which means that once I go over it, I will no longer be able to return. They are trying to forever separate me from my _son_ , Emma; you can’t allow that to happen!”

“…What?” Emma asked, the question posed soft and disbelieving. She blinked heavily, trying to process the information. “How… how do you even know this, about the town line? No one’s said anything about it.”

“I very much doubt anyone outside of Rumple—Mr. _Gold,_ ” Regina corrected, unsure if Emma was aware of everyone’s Enchanted Forest counterparts, “has tried. Now that the curse has lifted, everyone in this town is an outsider to this world; I assume they wish to stick together, for familiarity.”

“Regina, Gold is still here,” Emma told her, looking at the sorceress as though she wasn’t making any sense, before finally gesturing over towards Hook. “If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t have _that_ idiot locked up for trying to stab him.”

“The bastard deserved much more than that, I can assure you,” Hook growled, eyes flashing dangerously. “He killed the woman I _love;_ that is not something one let’s slide.”

“Then maybe you should have fucking told me that instead of trying to take justice into your own hands,” Emma snapped, before correcting with a brief look at the hook that was now lying on her desk, “ _Hand,_ whatever. This isn’t the Middle Ages; killing people isn’t how we solve our damn problems here.”

Hook scoffed. “You actually wished for me to file a formal complaint with your damned office, when you’ve done nothing but prove yourself incompetent of upholding the law when you repeatedly refused to do anything about the damage to my _ship?_ Excuse me, princess, for not trusting you with something far more important, but I think you’ve already proven that you cannot be relied on to get anything done.”

“Your ship is a goddamn _sailboat!_ ” Emma shouted, looking at him like he had gone mental for even caring about such a thing. “Do you really expect me to bother with something like that, when we have _actual_ crimes to deal with?”

“It’s only a bloody sailboat because _she_ turned it into one!” Hook exclaimed, furiously pointing at Regina. “The Jolly Roger was once a magnificent—”

“Be quiet!” Regina shouted, effectively cutting him off. “Your petty grievances are low on the scale of importance right now. Emma, the boundary—”

“I want justice for what was done to _Milah!_ ” Hook furiously exclaimed. “And if you won’t do anything about it, then—!”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Emma growled, furiously grabbing her keys off of her belt and coming over towards the cell door. “Hook, just _shut up_ and chill out; we’ll talk about Gold later and what kind of justice can be done. Regina, come with me; we obviously need another place to talk.”

Regina furiously pushed past Hook, nearly knocking him into the side wall as she strode from the cell. After Emma closed and locked the door, her fingers clamped around Regina’s wrist, acting as quasi-handcuffs as she led the woman into the interrogation room. “Explain,” she requested shortly as she leaned against the chestnut framed door.

Regina situated herself atop the long table, crossing her legs in front of her in an attempt to look at least a little more dignified than she felt. It was very unbecoming, this whole _arresting_ nonsense. Still, Regina grit her teeth and bared it, for _Emma_ as well as for her son. She needed to prove that she wasn’t the woman she once was. 

“I spoke with Gold a few days ago; he told me that the curse did not break right, and as such the boundary is still intact,” Regina explained. “From my understanding, he threw someone over it to test his theory.”

“Who?”

“He didn’t say. But that’s hardly the point, Emma; if what he says is true do you even understand what that means? I’m willing to accept the punishment for my crimes, but I will _not_ be permanently separated from Henry! No crime I’ve committed is deserving of that fate; he is my _son!_ ”

“Actually I’m pretty sure the fact that you’ve murdered a shit ton of people makes you deserving of a lot of stuff, but just _relax_ for a second, okay? Christ,” Emma responded sharply, not terribly keen on being shouted at. She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before assuring her, “I won’t let that happen. I’m not stupid; I know Henry needs you. I wouldn’t do that to either of you.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Regina snapped. She pointed towards the distance, indicating Snow somewhere far away from them both. “Your mother has already made it _perfectly_ clear what she thinks of me, and I would not put it past her to do something like this so she can assure I stay as far away from you and Henry as possible.”

Emma’s gaze darkened and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Mary Margaret doesn’t have a say in who I do or do not choose to have in my life; that’s _my_ decision and she knows it.”

Regina almost laughed at her, but contained herself. God, how naïve Emma could be was almost frightening. “Look around you, Emma,” Regina began, gesturing with open palms. “This is not the world you grew up in. It may look like it, but the rules have changed quite substantially. This country was built on democracy, and yet I was torn from my position as Mayor while your parents didn’t even bother to have a reelection, instead naming themselves my successor. They will hide behind the veil of change, pretend that they abide by the rules in this land, and yet in the end, they will be nothing else but the King and Queen they once were, and you, the Princess, who has yet to earn the right to have any say in political matters.”

“This isn’t a _political matter,_ ” Emma snapped. “This is a police matter, which makes it _my_ business. And I think the fact that you’re not getting sentenced to death for everything is a testament to how much differently things are handled in this world.”

Regina leaned forward in her seat, looking Emma dead in the eyes. “I tore everyone from your parents’ kingdom. I robbed them and their people of their home, their memories. This _is_ political, dear; but what’s worse than that is that it’s _personal._ I bedded the sole successor to their line, which will never allow them to look at this objectively; to them, I am not just a threat to their kingdom, but to their heir. And the _only_ reason I’m not going to be strapped to a stake in the middle of the town square with a gun pointed at my head, is because of how my death would affect their grandson.”

Emma rolled her eyes as she exhaled an impatient breath, “Regina, this is _Storybrooke,_ not their ‘Kingdom’. You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic. This is how things are in the world where we come from, and like it or not, it’s going to bleed out into how this town is governed because that is all they know. I need you to understand how they view this situation if you’re even going to have a _hope_ of possibly stopping it.”

“Regina,” Emma began firmly, pushing herself off the door to cross the room towards the woman she was speaking to. She stopped just a mere pace in front of her and continued, “Look at me, _listen_ to me.” Regina’s gaze flittered towards Emma’s, trying not to let herself get lost in the ocean of the other woman’s eyes. “I am _not_ going to let that happen, okay? You might have deserved to lose me, but I won’t let you lose your son.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” Regina said softly, feeling her pessimism weigh heavily on her heart. She tore her eyes away from Emma, focusing on the far wall.

“Then why come to me?”

“Because I have no one else,” Regina breathed sadly, the truth in the statement feeling rather crushing in its cruelty. She brushed the hair from her eyes before looking back up at Emma, seeing the emotion flitter across the blonde’s features at her admission. “And yet, at the same time, I don’t have you at all… do I? But I have to have faith that you still care enough for me to help, because without that, I have nothing.”

Emma swallowed hard, eyebrows crinkling in mild distress. “You might not have me in the way that you used to,” she began softly, her fingers brushing over the other woman’s thigh momentarily before she had enough sense to pull away and clear her throat. Emma averted her gaze for a moment before finishing quietly with, “But you will _always_ have me, Regina; that’s… that’s what makes everything so goddamn hard.”

Regina’s throat tightened. “Emma…” She reached for her hand, but the Sherriff pulled away and took a step back.

“Don’t,” she told her shortly, unable to meet Regina’s gaze. “You know it’ll only make it worse.” Regina pursed her lips, but did not push that matter, for she knew Emma was right. Still, it was difficult; to be this close to her, and yet still unable to have her. Regina’s heart ached for a love lost, but she suppressed it, as there were more important matters at hand.

Emma sighed, pushing the hair back from her face. “I wish I knew about this earlier,” she muttered. “I don’t know if forty five minutes is enough time to convince David and Mary Margaret to change your sentencing. Maybe I can just have them put it off for a few days…”

Regina looked at her incredulously, “I _tried_ to tell you earlier, but you wouldn’t answer your phone!” She was not about to be blamed for the lack of time, when it wasn’t her fault in the slightest.

“…Oh.” Emma scrunched her face to the side in guilt before she hesitantly admitted, “Ah, yeah. I kind of… broke it. Well, the _wall_ broke it, but I… helped. A little. Maybe.”

Regina just raised a judging eyebrow and Emma sighed.

“Look, gimme a break; at least I’m not drunk for your sentencing today. Baby steps, okay? This whole thing isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world to deal with.”

Regina continued to stare disbelievingly at her as she countered, “You might not be drunk, but you _did_ drink today.” It was a shot in the dark, but it hit dead center.

“I…” Emma blinked, looking perplexed. Then she flushed, her embarrassment over being caught hitting her like a freight train. “How the hell did you know that?” 

Regina merely arched her eyebrow further in response and crossed her arms across her chest. It was then that Emma realized, and scoffed in irritation.

“Right, yeah, cause you know me better than anyone; would you like a medal for it?” she shot back, shaking her head. “Like I said, baby steps, alright? Stop judging me, Regina; _shit._ ”

Regina slid herself off the table, her heels clicking against the linoleum flooring before she crossed the room to meet Emma near the door. “I’m not judging you,” she told her seriously. “I’m merely saying what you cannot. And if you’re ashamed of it, Emma, perhaps you shouldn’t do it.”

Emma looked as though she were about to say something, but the words died in her throat and she averted her gaze. In the end, she knew she had nothing to say that would condone her behavior, or justify it in any sense. But then again, it wouldn’t be a vice if she could.

“Come on,” Regina said gently, aware that she had at least made her point in that area and knowing better than to push. She took Emma’s hand, encouraging the woman to hold her wrist once more. “Take me back to my cell so you can speak with David and Snow.”

Emma’s eyes met hers for a moment, and then fell to their hands before she nodded. She didn’t have to say it, but as Emma’s grip tightened protectively on Regina’s wrist, she knew that Emma would do everything she could.

Regina just hoped that it would be enough.

[x]

It wasn’t enough.

Emma felt her breath leave her as Mary Margaret decreed her final word, sentencing Regina to banishment from Storybrooke until the end of her days. The brunette, who stood with her hands cuffed behind her back and on shameful display for all the town to see, went ashy white at the news. She became terribly unbalanced, as though she was fighting her knees from buckling beneath her, and her stricken expression sparked a rage so fierce inside of Emma that within moments she stood, slamming her hands down on the surface of the table.

“You can’t _do_ that!” she shrieked, her darkening gaze settling on Mary Margaret on the other side of the long table. Emma felt thoroughly betrayed; she had been led to believe that they were going to change their minds, find another suitable punishment, only to have them do very thing that Emma was fighting against. They couldn’t do this to Regina. They couldn’t do this to _Henry._

At the very least, Emma was thankful that their son was currently being babysat by Ruby, as both Mary Margaret and David thought that he shouldn’t be around for the sentencing. They believed it would be too hard on him, and now, Emma knew exactly _why_ they had thought that.

God, how was she supposed to tell her son that he was never going to see his mother again?

“Emma, _sit down,_ ” David hissed quietly, looking embarrassed that his own daughter spoke out against their decision in front of everyone. But Emma wasn’t a goddamn princess in their castle; she had a voice, and in this world she was privy to using it. She wasn’t about to just take this lying down.

Mary Margaret cleared her throat awkwardly before trying to continue. “You will have twenty four hours to gather up your belongings and leave of your own free will, or else further action will be taken. In the matter of Henry Mills, all custodial rights will be given to his birthmother, Emma Swan—”

“No, this is _bullshit!_ ” Emma shouted, nearly making Mary Margaret jump from the force of her voice. She then shot her daughter a dark look, pursing her lips before sliding her chair back and standing.

“Emma, a word; _now,_ ” Mary Margaret muttered furiously before crossing over towards her. However, she stopped in front of David for a minute and placed a loving hand on his shoulder. “Finish out the hearing,” she told him softly. “And then escort Regina back to her manor.” Her husband nodded, and Emma shot them both a scathing look before storming from the room, heading into the back office.

As Mary Margaret followed behind her, it seemed Regina had finally broken from her disbelieving trance and Emma could hear her fiercely exclaim, “I will _not_ let you take me from my son!” But Mary Margaret closed the door behind them, silencing any further words. Emma rounded on her in an instant, a fire blazing in the pit of her gut.

“What the _hell_ were you thinking? I told you what would happen with the boundary, and yet you still—!”

“Don’t _ever_ do that again,” Mary Margaret interrupted, her own anger growing substantially at the embarrassment Emma had caused her and her husband. “This town is in chaos, and undermining the only leaders they have is only going to further the anarchy. You are our _daughter_ , Emma; it is your duty to stand behind our decisions.”

“I’d stand behind them if they weren’t so completely _fucked!_ ” Emma shouted, not caring in the least about her parents’ image. “You told me—!”

“I said we would _think_ about it!” Mary Margaret cut off, knowing what her daughter was about to say. “And we did; your father and I took the boundary issue into consideration. But in the end, this was what was best for the town, and what was best for our family. Regina poisons everything she touches, Emma; it’s in your and Henry’s best interest that she be purged from your lives.”

Emma shook with rage, her eyes flashing as she pointed furiously towards the door. “You know, if Regina was even _half_ the woman that you claim she is, she would have already taken Henry and burned this whole damn town to the ground! She cursed you all for twenty eight years, and yeah, I get you’re pissed about that, but she had all that time to… I don’t know, _torture_ you or something – hell, even _kill_ you – but did she? _No._ ” Emma took a step towards the slender brunette, her voice dangerously low as she finished, “Have you even bothered to ask yourself why that is, or is your head stuck so far up your own ass that you can’t see anything but yourself?”

“Emma!” Mary Margaret exclaimed, horrified by the way her daughter was speaking to her. She looked wounded by it, yet tried to continue with reason, as though her decision held any _real_ justification. “Look, I… I understand that you’re upset about this, and I’m sorry, but Regina only being a shadow of what she once was neither changes the things that she has done, nor what she is capable of doing in the future, should she choose. She’s dangerous, and she _has_ to answer for her crimes.”

“But she didn’t have to in this way!” Emma responded heatedly. “I know it doesn’t change what she’s done, _believe me,_ but there was another way to handle this and yet instead, because you have some age-old vendetta against her, you did _this._ ” The blonde shook her head, looking disgusted by the choices her former friend had made. “You can say it was for Henry and me all you want, but at the end of the day, it isn’t going to be _this_ that finally makes us a family. If anything, it’s going to be what tears us apart.”

Mary Margaret looked crushed at her words. “Emma…” But the blonde held up her hands, taking a step back from her.

“No. You made your decision, now you can figure out a way to live with it. In the meantime, I have to go tell my _son_ that he may never see his mother again, thanks to you.” Emma stepped away from her, heading towards the door. “I really hope you’re happy with yourself.”

Mary Margaret tried to call out to her, but she was ignored. Furious tears stung the back of Emma’s eyes, but she wouldn’t allow them to fall as she quickly strode from City Hall, wishing beyond anything else that she had the power to fix what her… her damn _parents_ had screwed up.

But God… she really didn’t have the first clue on how to start.

**TBC… ******


	10. Banishment

**CHAPTER TEN  
Banishment**

Emma felt her heart shatter as she watched Henry cling to Regina with tears in his eyes, unable to let her go in fear that it would really be the last time that he ever saw her. Regina looked devastated, but would not allow her own tears to fall in favor of trying to comfort her son. She ran her fingers through his tussled hair and kissed his forehead protectively, whispering promises that everything would be alright. Still, the words held little meaning without a guarantee, and that was something they couldn’t give him. At least, not yet.

Emma had an idea, but she had yet to voice it to Regina. If it wasn’t going to work, there was no need to give Henry false hope, and so she awaited privacy so that they could discuss their options.

Emma meant it when she said she wouldn’t allow Regina to lose her son. And maybe it wasn’t ideal, not in any sense of the word – especially for her _own_ sense of sanity – but it was the only option she could see at the moment. She just hoped it was feasible, because seeing Henry like this… Emma couldn’t handle it. It tore her apart inside and made her feel so incredibly helpless, and not at all like the protective mother that she should’ve been for the kid.

“I need to speak with Emma for a minute,” Regina told him softly, brushing the hair from Henry’s tear-stained eyes. “We’re going to discuss our options, okay? So why don’t you go on upstairs and help me finish packing up; find some of your favorite pictures of us, or something else meaningful to you, that you would like me to bring. Can you do that for me?”

Henry sniffled, rubbing his runny nose on the sleeve of his shirt before nodding. Regina gave him a soft smile, then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “This won’t be the last time I see you,” she promised softly. “One day, no matter how long it takes, I _will_ come back for you.”

“Do you promise?” Henry asked, his voice so terribly small and sad.

“I promise.”

Henry looked at her for a long moment before enveloping her in another hug. Regina squeezed him fiercely before letting him go, and the kid shot a hopeful, pleading look at Emma before bounding up the stairs. Once he disappeared into his bedroom, Regina finally allowed herself to feel, and tears began sliding down her cheeks as she got to her feet.

There was so much unresolved between the two of them, so much deep-seated anger that Emma still felt towards the woman who had betrayed her, and yet still, in that moment, Emma knew that now wasn’t the time to dwell on any of that. Regina had faced enough devastation as it was and really needed someone right then, and like she had said that morning, Emma was all that she had.

So the blonde stepped towards her, the love that still resided in her heart unable to allow Regina to just stand there and cry alone, and wrapped the woman up in her arms. The gesture seemed to break Regina even more and she buried her face in Emma’s neck, the force of her sobs wracking her entire body. It broke Emma’s heart to see her like this; despite all that had happened, no one deserved this cruel a fate. Regina loved Henry more than anything else in this world, and just the mere thought that she would be separated from him forever nearly broke her in two.

“I want to take him and run,” Regina breathed against her neck, the admission cracking her already strained voice. “The urge is so strong I can barely contain it, barely… barely _think_ of anything else. But Emma, I… God, I _can’t—_ ”

“Do that to me,” Emma finished for her softly, running her fingers through the other woman’s hair. “I know, Regina. That’s… I love you for that, okay? I… I really do.” 

And she did, but that still didn’t change anything between them. Emma was sure that she would always love Regina, but that was what killed her; that’s what made it hard to just wake up in the morning and _function_ , the inability for her to accept that she would probably have to live the rest of her life without being with her, because the things that Regina had done… it was too hard to just look past them. She couldn’t, and Emma hated that more than anything. She felt like she was being torn in half. 

She loved Regina with every inch of her being, yet she despised the horrors that the woman had inflicted on others so much that sometimes it was hard to even _look_ at her. Regina was the reason that she had grown up without a family, she was the reason Graham and countless others had died. And it disgusted Emma, that despite all that, she still wished that she could just forget it all and fall into her. She missed how happy she had been, how happy _they_ had been together, more than anything else.

And people wondered why she drank herself nearly to death. Emma couldn’t emotionally handle being pulled in two different directions; it crumbled her sanity.

But she had drank quite a bit earlier, and it at least made her able to focus on one direction for the time being. And perhaps it wasn’t entirely smart, but Emma knew that Regina couldn’t handle her anger and bitterness right now, and so she gave her something else; something that, hopefully, would make this separation a little easier for the time being.

Emma closed her eyes, trying to block out the little voice in the back of her mind as she uttered the words she knew she could never take back once she said them, for giving Regina hope and then taking it away so brutally would be far worse than never saying them at all. “We’ll follow you,” Emma told her softly. “Henry and I, we’ll… we can leave Storybrooke.”

Regina blinked, pulling away from Emma with a disbelieving look etched across her tear-stained features. “What?” she asked breathlessly. “Are you…?”

“Being near you is going to fuck me up,” Emma admitted, because she needed Regina to understand what exactly she was offering here, “And probably in a really bad way. But… maybe it was stupid to think that I’d ever really be able to get away from you, when we share a son. He needs you, Regina. I’m not… fuck, I’m not cut out to be a single parent; at most I’m a glorified babysitter for the kid. He’s better off with you, with visitation rights from _me._ You can give him more than I can.”

Regina pursed her lips, emotion flickering across her face before she told her softly, “You underestimate your own ability, dear.”

“Maybe,” Emma conceded. “But that still doesn’t mean that he’s not better off with you. We’re like… god, like divorced parents, aren’t we? It’s so…” The blonde shook her head, resting her eyes on the far wall. “But you were right when you said I couldn’t take care of myself right now, let alone a kid. I’ve never really been able to take care of myself, honestly; not in any way that really matters. I just float around from one place to the next and do what I have to to get by, but I’ve never really had any kind of stability, no real sense of home. Henry needs that, and I think that he’ll get that with you, no matter where you end up.”

Regina’s face softened with emotion, and without thought she reached her hand up, gently cupping the Sherriff’s cheek. “Emma…” she breathed. “You do… _realize_ that if you leave, you will never be able to come back. Your parents—”

“I know,” Emma responded quietly, hesitating at the feeling of Regina’s skin against hers for a moment before she gently turned her face away from the touch. “But Henry’s just a kid; we gotta do what’s best for him, even if it’s not ideal for us. That’s what being a parent is about… right?”

Regina smiled at her softly, as though she was really proud of the woman Emma was shaping up to be despite all the hardships she had been put through, and nodded her understanding. “Alright,” she responded. “If you’re certain that’s what you want, then I’ll at least need you to watch Henry for a couple weeks while I figure out a good place for us to settle down. I’ll not only have to find a place for Henry and I to live, but you as well; and on top of finding jobs for the both of us, wherever we go needs to have a good enough school system for our son.”

Emma exhaled a long breath, the movement puffing out her cheeks a bit as she slumped against the wall. “Damn,” she murmured. “I didn’t…”

“Realize it would entail so much?” Regina finished for her gently, knowing that whenever Emma had picked up and moved, it never involved that much thought or planning. The blonde nodded, prompting Regina to continue, “If we didn’t have Henry to think about, perhaps we _would_ have been able to just go now and stay in a motel room until we have our affairs in order, but that’s not a good environment for a child. I know Henry will be glad for this, but it will still be very hard on him to leave; he has lived in Storybrooke his whole life, so if we can, we need to make the transition a little easier for him.”

“Yeah, no, I… I get it,” Emma told her, running her fingers through her hair before shaking her head. “I just… with everything that’s been going on…”

“Emma,” Regina said seriously, placing her hands on the other woman’s biceps to get her full attention. “I am trusting you to take care of our son, and that means you have to take care of yourself for a little while. Please just— I… I know things have been hard on you lately, but you’re stronger than this addiction you’ve fallen into. I _know_ you are.”

Emma hated how weak she had become over the past couple weeks, and it shamed her really badly, to have to listen to Regina beg for her to be proper parent to their son while she was gone. She should be able to do that anyway, and yet every day she awoke she felt like she was slipping further into a black hole she couldn’t claw her way out from. Even if she didn’t drink to excess on some days, she still _drank_ , because facing the world and her emotions completely sober frightened the hell out of her.

Emma had become something she hated, yet trying to fix it seemed to scare her even more than continuing to fall deeper into the abyss.

“Regina…” her voice was soft, apologetic, but Regina would have none of it.

“ _Emma,_ ” she said firmly, taking the blonde’s chin in her hand to force her to look into her eyes. “You have to _promise_ me. This is important.”

Emma inhaled a shuddered breath at the fierceness in the other woman’s gaze, feeling as though it burned a hole through her. She cast her eyes downwards in an instant, though did not move from Regina’s grasp. “I’ll try,” she breathed, but that wasn’t good enough.

“Don’t try, _do it,_ ” Regina told her strongly. “Emma, look at me. _Promise me,_ right now.”

Emma looked up at her once more, feeling the back of her eyes sting with fresh tears. This was too much; she hadn’t drank _nearly_ enough today to combat these kinds of emotions, and it was slowly breaking down the walls that intoxication had built around her heart. Regina’s face softened at her distress, but she did not waver from her request. She needed to hear it.

“Regina,” Emma breathed, her voice sounding so broken and small. “I’m falling apart…”

“I know,” Regina whispered sadly, and the guilt in her tone was evident enough to pierce straight into the blonde before her. She took Emma’s face in her hands, cradling her as she leaned her forehead against hers, trying to give her comfort in the only way she really knew how to.

“No, you _don’t_ know,” Emma choked out, feeling a hot tear scorch its way down her cheek. “I love you and I hate you, and it’s… I can’t stay in one direction and I feel like I’m being torn in half. I can’t live like this. I can’t… I can’t _look_ at you and not know how I’m supposed to feel; it’s driving me insane.”

Regina closed her eyes, and Emma could feel her sorrow before she even opened her mouth. “You’re not going to be able to do this… are you?” She sounded as though her entire world was crumbling down around her, but that wasn’t Emma’s intention by saying that at all. She just… she felt as though she needed to voice it, at the very least; have Regina understand how hard this was going to be for her.

“No, I… I said I would,” Emma told her, wiping the tears from her eyes as she pulled back, needing the space. “It’s the best thing for Henry. I’ll… I don’t know, find some way to deal with it, I guess.”

Regina creased her eyebrows, sadness mapping every inch of her features as she wiped another fallen tear off of Emma’s cheek. “The last thing I want to do is torture you, Emma. I… well, perhaps if we—”

“Regina,” Emma interrupted, her voice firm despite how scratchy and tight her throat had become. “I said I’d do it. He matters more. Just… just _get_ that this is gonna really suck for me, okay? And… and maybe lie to me and tell me that it’s going to get better.”

Without even a moment’s hesitation, Regina complied with her wishes and told her, “It’s going to get better.” 

Emma laughed. It was soft, disbelieving, yet still, there was a sense of happiness in it, glad that Regina had done what she had asked without thought, just because she needed to hear it be said.

“It won’t though, will it?”

“Perhaps not,” Regina replied honestly, her eyes searching out the blonde’s gaze before continuing, “But I swear to you, Emma, even if I can never truly make it up to you, it won’t stop me from trying every single day of my life.”

Those words struck something within Emma that was hard to name, yet it shot through her veins like a fire, compressing her heart in her chest and making it thump rapidly beneath her ribcage. She turned away from her, unable to look Regina in the eye for too long, as it only stood to make her even more conflicted. But the brunette took Emma’s hands in hers, drawing the attention back towards her.

“Promise me, Emma,” she requested softly. “Now.”

Emma swallowed and looked down at their linked hands, terrified that she was going to swear to something she couldn’t do, despite knowing that the option to fail could never really be available to her. This was too important. _Henry_ was too important.

And so hesitantly Emma nodded, catching Regina’s gaze once more as she whispered her promise of, “I’ll take care of him, Regina. I swear.”

[x]

There was an ungodly amount of people at the town line, all wishing to bear witness to the Evil Queen’s final defeat as she was run out of Storybrooke for good. It infuriated Regina, to be put on such display, but she tried to block the peasants from her mind as she parked her black Mercedes just a few feet from the town line. She blinked heavily, pausing a moment to get ahold of her own emotions before stepping from the vehicle; it was bad enough that this final exchange had to have witnesses, but to come apart during it all would make this much more shameful.

Regina took a breath as she opened her car door, her heels clicking against the pavement as she walked over to where Henry and Emma stood, the blonde’s arm firmly around the child’s shoulders. She could feel everyone’s eyes on her, but tried to brush it off as she gave Henry a small smile, kneeling down a little to come to his height.

He practically catapulted into her arms.

Regina held tight to him, allowing Henry to bury his face into her hair. “It’ll be okay,” she breathed into his ear, just low enough for only him to hear. “Just a few weeks, alright? I promise.” Henry nodded into her neck, and Regina continued softly, “But remember, this is our little secret. So… you have to pretend that this is the last time that you’re going to see me.” Regina didn’t really want to say the next words out of her mouth, but she knew they had to put on a convincing show, less they wished to makes the Charmings suspicious. “Are you… able to cry a little, dear?”

Regina could feel Henry smirk against the skin of her neck, and she tried not to outwardly react to it, although she was secretly pleased that her request seemed to amuse him, at the very least.

“Emma taught me,” he whispered into her ear, just before a sob suddenly wracked his tiny body, and it sounded so _damn_ convincing that Regina held tighter to him on instinct. She was almost proud of him for it, despite that fact that she had the urge to lecture Emma for at _least_ a solid half hour for teaching their son such a thing, as she was sure Emma only taught him that so he could get out of trouble with his adoptive mother.

Regina suddenly found herself questioning each and every time her son had cried, but forced herself to push past it, as now was _really_ not the time to dwell on such things.

Keeping up with the image, Regina hushed her son, telling him that it would be alright while Snow and Charming began to look more and more uncomfortable behind Emma. They knew Henry’s distress was their fault, and the vindictive streak in Regina reveled in their pain. She hoped they felt positively _awful,_ because what they did was beyond cruel; not just to her, but to Henry as well. 

They were lucky that Emma had found a suitable alternative; otherwise this ‘last goodbye’ would have happened a _hell_ of a lot differently.

Emma came over then, gently placing a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Let me talk to your mom for a second, okay, kid?” she softly requested, and Henry mutely nodded as he pulled away, tears still streaming down his face. The image broke Regina’s heart, and despite knowing that it was staged, she reached out for him for another moment, clasping their hands together as she gave him a small smile.

“I love you, Henry; more than anything in this world. Don’t _ever_ forget that, alright?”

Henry sniffled, but nodded. “I love you too, Mom,” he whispered quietly, before giving her one last look and fleeing towards Ruby, bypassing Snow and Charming completely, as it had been deemed entirely their fault that this was happening. Snow looked wounded, as she had held out her arms to try to comfort him, but what was she honestly expecting? She had banished his _mother._

Idiot girl. Stupid, _petulant_ child. Regina hoped she choked on the misery that she caused.

She got to her feet, coming eye level with Emma. The two women noticeably paused, unsure of how to part ways, considering everything that happened between them. Staged or not, neither of them really knew what the appropriate thing to do was, however they knew that if this was really happening, was really _permanent_ , that they would never leave without saying something to one another.

It just seemed neither knew how to start.

So Regina threw appropriate out the window and went with her gut reaction instead. If she, truly, was never going to see Emma again, then there really was only one thing that she _would_ do. So without warning she stepped towards her, eradicating the space between them, and tangled her fingers through blonde locks as she pulled the woman into a fierce kiss.

Emma noticeably froze, and a soft gasp from Snow was heard behind them, followed by a quick, “Don’t,” from Charming, who no doubt restrained the woman from going over and physically _stopping_ them.

It took a few seconds, but Emma finally fell into her, breathing a defeated sigh against her lips as she allowed Regina to consume her. She touched her face, pushing into Regina a little as she deepened the kiss, and the brunette found she no longer had to act distressed, for she realized that another moment like this wasn’t a guarantee. It was a gut-wrenching truth that tore her apart inside, and so Regina reveled in this moment as though it were her last, as it very well could be.

Regina’s fingers danced along the back of her neck, her thumb caressing the hollow of Emma’s throat in a possessive manner that only the woman before her would ever truly understand and appreciate. It seemed to hit Emma with some kind of memory though and she shuddered with desire, whimpering very softly into Regina’s mouth, before her brain finally caught up to the reality of the situation and she forced herself to pull away. 

Breathing heavily, Emma looked up at her, her expression a mixture of conflicting emotions that began to make Regina feel terribly guilty. Perhaps she shouldn’t have put Emma through that, but it was the most honest reaction she could think of in that moment.

“I’m sorry,” Regina breathed, still holding tight to the back of Emma’s neck as her eyes fell closed, gently leaning her forehead against the other woman’s. It was an apology for what she had just done, despite needing it to sound like a generalization to anyone listening. “I… I love you, Emma Swan; more than you could ever possibly hope to imagine. Even if you do try to forget me in time, please don’t ever forget that you were loved, because no one else could ever be so deserving of it.”

Emma tried to blink back tears, but one slipped down her cheek regardless, and the former queen had the suspicion that it wasn’t faked at all. Regina gently wiped it away with her thumb before dragging the digit downwards, momentarily tracing Emma’s bottom lip as though she was enamored by her beauty. And perhaps she was, perhaps she always would be, even when Emma was old and gray. Still, parting from her was hard, even if they would inevitably see each other again, and Regina didn’t want to move away from the woman that had finally filled the void inside of her heart.

And then, words came back to her that she had never expected to be voiced in front of others. “I love you too, Regina,” Emma breathed, the words being enveloped by a sob before she forcefully pushed herself away from the brunette, unable to be near her any longer due to the pain that the truth brought her. Emma drank to run from it, yet despite her efforts, she really could never run far enough to forget.

It killed Regina inside, to know how much this arrangement was going to hurt the woman she loved. Yet in the end, she could not bear to never see Henry again, and so she allowed Emma to be hurt by it. Regina felt sick because of it, and yet it changed nothing.

Snow came to her daughter then, gently clasping her hand around Emma’s wrist to encourage her away from Regina. “Come on, Emma,” she tried softly, but Emma just yanked her wrist from her mother’s grasp before stomping over towards Henry, not even sparing her parents another glance.

Regina stared her down; Snow, the woman who had caused her so much pain over the years, and yet still insisted on causing more. And even though she knew that she shouldn’t, Regina couldn’t help her instinct, for she knew that if this really was the end of the road, she would have done it anyway.

So before Snow knew what was happening, Regina moved, her fist brutally colliding with the other woman’s face.

Snow cried out as blood squirted from her nose, the crowd gasped, and Charming ran towards his wife while Emma exclaimed, “Shit, _Regina!_ ” before running full throttle towards her, getting herself between Regina and her father, as he looked like he was going to retaliate in a pretty violent way. 

Emma had the flat of her hands on both Charming and Regina’s chests, forcefully keeping them apart as Snow stumbled back behind her husband, frantically grasping at her nose to try to make the bleeding stop. Regina’s eyes were like fire as she sneered, “Hurt my family like this again, and I will _destroy_ you, Snow. I don’t care about the _damn_ boundary; I will find a way.”

“Don’t you dare threaten my _wife,_ Regina! Because you will not like how it—!”

“Stop it, both of you!” Emma shouted, using all of her strength to furiously shove them apart, forcing the two of them to take a couple steps backwards. Regina was breathing heavily, her eyes flashing with hatred as she continued to stare down Snow, not even bothering to acknowledge Charming’s existence. He was so terribly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things anyhow.

“Regina, you need to go,” Emma told her, rounding on her former lover before wrapping her hand around her bicep, guiding her towards the car.

Regina went without a fight, sparing one last glance at Henry, who was staring at the scene before him with wide eyes. A pang of guilt shot through Regina, as she shouldn’t have done that with her son present, but she hadn’t thought before she acted, and there was no way to do it differently now. Maybe Henry would understand, although a part of her still hoped that he never would, as she didn’t want him growing up believing violence was condoned under certain circumstances. 

When they got to the car, Regina grasped Emma’s hand, not allowing her to go just yet as she told her, “Tell Henry that what I just did was wrong. I don’t want him thinking—”

“I will, because what you just did was _stupid,_ Regina,” Emma hissed, low enough so that no one else would hear her. “I get wanting to hit her, but how much harder do you think it’s going to be for Henry and I now, to tell them that we’re going to leave? My pa—Mary Margaret and David,” she corrected, as she was still unable to use the ‘p’ word, “are probably going to be determined now more than ever to stop it.”

“Then don’t tell them,” Regina told her shortly, as though her easy answer would dismiss the shame she felt for acting like that in front of quite a lot of witnesses.

“What, just up a _leave?_ ” Emma whispered back fiercely, “We can’t do that, Regina. That’s fucked; Henry’s their _grandson._ ”

Regina sighed, slumping against the car door. This day had been emotionally exhausting, and it seemed that it was finally catching up with her. “We can’t talk about this now,” she reminded her. “Go buy yourself a new phone and call me this weekend, alright? Please.”

“Fine,” Emma conceded, before gently pulling herself away from her. “Just do me a favor and don’t do anymore stupid things while we’re apart; I can’t protect your hostile ass if I’m not there.”

Her words actually startled Regina and she looked at Emma, eyebrows rising in surprise at what was just implied. The blonde seemed to realize what she had said too, just a little too late, and she averted her gaze as she grumbled, “You know what I mean,” as she began to walk away from her, back towards Henry, and away from a statement she clearly did not want to elaborate on.

“Yes, dear,” Regina murmured, trying to hide the small smile that was threatening to make an appearance at Emma’s unexpected words. “I believe I do.” 

**TBC…**


	11. Favor

**CHAPTER ELEVEN  
Favor**

It wasn’t easy, keeping her promise to Regina.

Things were rockier than ever with Mary Margaret and David, and their constant insistence that they had ‘done the right thing’ did nothing but grate on Emma’s nerves. There was nothing _right_ about what they had done, in any sense of the word, and they were lucky that she and Regina had already formulated a plan to rectify the situation, because Henry would have been inconsolable otherwise, which would not have sat well with Emma at _all._

Henry, to his credit, still acted as though he was never going to see his mother again and constantly moped around the apartment, giving Mary Margaret and David the occasional dirty looks when they tried to act as though everything was _normal._ Emma wasn’t particularly happy either, and over the past week and a half she had more than once blown up at them about how her disaster of a love life wasn’t for them to control.

In a way, life without Regina _was_ easier, but as that was not going to be the case for as long as she lived, Emma refused to indulge in the freedom. There was no use pretending that because of Henry they wouldn’t be tied to each other for the rest of their lives, and so although it was unnecessary that Regina call her nearly every single night to check in, Emma allowed it. 

Their calls ranged from talking about where they were going to live, to arguing about personal matters. Although, in all fairness, the arguing _did_ sometimes spill over into their planning, but Emma’s temper had been on a short fuse as of late, since she wasn’t drinking enough to numb herself anymore. Just… just enough to get her through the day.

“It’s not an _actual_ farm, Emma,” Regina had told her on day five, her tone sounding as though the blonde was trying her patience. “It isn’t as though I’m going to expect you to wake up at five am and tend to the chickens. The house is merely farmhouse _style_ , and the loft apartment in the barn should be more than sufficient—”

“I don’t care; I’m not living in the middle of buttfuck nowhere as your kept _pet!_ ” Emma had exclaimed, the thought of being within _walking distance_ from Regina not sitting well with her at all. 

“Well the city is no place for a child, and your inability to recognize such is completely—!”

“That doesn’t fucking mean I have to live twenty feet from your damn _door_ , Regina! For fuck’s sake, use your head! You really think that’ll be rainbows and sunshine for me? _Jesus._ ”

Emma had eventually hung up on her, and later when they spoke again – when they were calm – they mutually compromised on finding a place in the suburbs with at least five miles in between their two living spaces. Still, Regina was having difficulty finding a school district that she approved of, let alone places for them to _live,_ and when Emma one day offhandedly mentioned that she might as well just enroll Henry into private school, Regina had snapped at her and told her that she wasn’t made of money.

Which, in all honesty, was news to her.

Emma had believed that Regina was extremely well off (cause hello, her _house,_ first of all), but it seemed that being the ruler of a cursed town had the perk of not having a mortgage, so she had never had to pay to live there. She just… willed it into existence, as well as all her clothes and possessions. Regina had given herself _some_ money when she created the curse, yes, but it wasn’t exactly infinite. It would run out sooner or later, and the disadvantage of being unable to sell her current house left Regina with a lot less than they both would have liked.

The woman never had to be careful about her spending before, and it seemed that now that she was being forced to, it tried her patience more than anything else; how she spat out the word _affordable_ when discussing places to live was more than enough proof of that. Regina hated it.

And honestly, Emma did too. It was just another roadblock on a highway of difficulties that she did _not_ have the strength to deal with.

It was hard enough, trying to function through the day with only enough liquor to keep her hands from shaking in the morning. Which she had instinctively lied to Regina about, as she knew the sorceress would not be pleased with the fact that she wasn’t one hundred percent competent while caring for their son, but it wasn’t as though Emma really had a _choice._ At least, not anymore. 

Which, of course, Regina readily disagreed with.

“Do you really think I’m that stupid? I know that you’re lying to me!” Regina had shouted at her through the phone on day eight. “And you _promised_ me that you would take care of Henry, and yet instead all you’ve done is proven, once again, that your selfishness—!”

“I am!” Emma had yelled back, resisting the urge to throw the phone against the wall. She couldn’t afford to replace it a second time. “Christ, Regina, I _am_ taking care of him, okay? He’s clean and he’s fed and he goes to school and… _whatever,_ okay? I know how to babysit him!”

“ _Parent,_ ” Regina had corrected fiercely. “You are _parenting_ him, Miss Swan, not babysitting him. He is your son.”

Emma’s teeth had ground together at the formality. She had learned to loathe it, as now Regina only used it when she was irritated with her. “I know what I’m doing, _Your Majesty._ And quite frankly, it’s really not any of your business how I get through the day. As long as I’m not tripping over myself drunk and getting the shit I need to get done _done,_ then it really doesn’t matter.”

“Why on _earth_ do you need to drink in the first place then, if you’re not even numbing anything?” Regina’s words had sounded more like an accusation, and they ended up pushing Emma right over the edge.

She didn’t want to tell Regina why, and her refusal only stood to frustrate the older woman to the point of actual expletives. Needless to say, that conversation didn’t end well and it had been two days now since they had spoken. To Regina’s credit, she had actually called the very next day, and to _Emma’s_ credit, she had answered, but it seemed Regina hadn’t expected her to, and after a few long moments of nothing but silence, the line went dead.

And not thirty seconds later, Henry’s phone rang in its stead.

Emma tried to tell herself that she didn’t care – that Regina was probably just too stubborn to apologize considering _this_ time she wasn’t entirely in the wrong – but in the end, it still bothered her. Maybe she had just become used to Regina practically groveling for forgiveness that Emma had begun to expect it at every little turn. But the drinking was on her, not on Regina, and although Emma was pissed that she couldn’t just let shit go, she wasn’t so stupid as to not realize that the entire thing was probably her fault anyway. 

But, then again, she could be just as stubborn as Regina was, and so she didn’t pick up the phone to call either. If she did, she knew Regina would still push for an explanation, and Emma _really_ did not want to do that. 

And so the silence commenced.

Which, in all honesty, was not the worst thing at the moment, considering Emma had plenty of other problems to deal with that didn’t stem from Regina.

“I swear to god, Elphaba, if you don’t stop calling about your _damn_ shoes—”

“Just hang up on her,” David responded in a tired voice as he came into the Sherriff’s station, dragging a handcuffed Gold behind him. Emma looked up at him as Elphaba continued shrieking on the other line about how incompetents like her shouldn’t be in office, before she decided to take his advice and slam the phone back down on the receiver. 

Screw that. She had _actual_ problems to deal with.

“The restraints were completely unnecessary, dearie; I would have come willingly,” Gold told her, trying to keep his tone light even though his aggravation was written across his face.

“Even with bars separating you both, keeping Hook and you in the same room unchained didn’t seem like the smartest idea in the world,” Emma shot back, before ordering, “Now _sit._ ”

With a firm hand on his shoulder from David, Gold was practically manhandled into a chair. His eyes flashed, but he kept his composure. Hook, on the other hand, did not.

He furiously pulled on his bindings, the handcuffs clanking loudly against the metal bars as his eyes grew dark with anger. “I’ve already told you, there is _nothing_ that this man can say that will sway me from giving him that which he deserves. The crocodile will pay for what he did, even if it’s the last _bloody_ thing I do!”

Emma was quickly losing patience. “Then fine, stay in that cage and _rot_ for all I give a crap!” she shouted, interrupting him. “Because if you actually think I’m going to let you out when you have some kind of age-old blood vendetta against someone in this town, you’ve got another damn thing coming, Hook. We got enough shit going on without everyone trying to kill each other.”

“Snow and I, as well as Emma, have agreed that from this day forth, any and all crimes that were committed in the Enchanted Forest will be pardoned,” David informed them both. “This is a clean slate for everyone, and I suggest you both make use of it, because the dwarves are currently building a proper jail so that Storybrooke can finally have a full-circle justice system, and we are not opposed to making the both of you its first two residents.”

“Me? Whatever did I do, dearie?” Gold inquired, a hint of a smirk playing at the edge of his lips. “Because from what I can recall, it was the infamous _Captain_ who had broken the law, not myself. I am the innocent victim in all of this.”

David scoffed in disbelief.

“You wanna know what’s in it for you?” Emma asked dangerously, leaning forward in her seat a little. “If you play nice with Hook, I’ll not only overlook that you threw an unwilling resident over the town line, but I’ll _also_ ignore the fact that it was _you_ who created the damn curse in the first place to bring everyone here.”

It seemed Gold wasn’t expecting Emma to know either of those things, and his jaw slacked. But then, ever so slightly, he smirked, as though he was actually _proud_ of her for figuring things out. It made Emma feel dirty, to be looked at by him in that way. Even without knowing that he was Rumpelstiltskin, Gold had always been really freaking creepy.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Emma continued pointedly, brushing off his look. “Information courtesy of Regina. I’d say you can thank her for it, but then, it was your doing that made her make this whole mess in the first place, which also makes you the underlying reason of _why she’s no longer here._ And that doesn’t exactly fill me with warm fuzzies.”

David side-glanced her, but said nothing. Emma was sure that she’d hear an earful later about how she was blaming everyone but Regina for the things she had done, but she didn’t care. She blamed Regina for _plenty,_ believe her that, but Emma knew that Regina didn’t get to where she was without help from other people as well.

In all honesty, the curse thing was merely a guess, but considering Regina told her before that she didn’t _create_ it, only really led to one other suspect. By Gold not outright refusing her claim, she knew that she had hit it right on the money too.

“I don’t expect you guys to hug it out, I just want a damn _truce,_ ” Emma went on, looking between them both. “So can you just… just fucking _do_ that, please? Because we seriously have more important things to deal with right now.”

The bandage that now covered David’s right forearm being a testament to that. He had finally caught up with Jafar two days ago, only to find that he really was with Scar – and Ursula too, apparently – and that they had somehow found a way to arm themselves. The bullet had just grazed David’s arm, but it was still enough to wound him. 

The three of them fled after that, and Emma was having a bitch of a time trying to find them again. For how small a town Storybrooke was, it seemed there were a million and one places to hide. It was incredibly frustrating, as she didn’t want to leave town before the current threat was taken care of. David and Snow weren’t safe, and as it was now, the three of them had to sleep in shifts. The enemy having guns elicited worries about being assassinated in their sleep, and it had just been… fuck, really damn hard on all of them lately.

She really didn’t have time to deal with crap like _this,_ but David insisted it would probably only take an hour out of their day and then they would no longer have to deal with it, which sounded appealing. They had enough on their plate as it was.

It took a little longer than she had expected, but finally both Gold and Hook agreed to call a truce, provided restraining orders were put in place. Emma had no idea how long that would last, as in her experience, restraining orders didn’t exactly deter the determined, but she hoped that they would at least respect it for a little while. She was sure that she’d be hearing of another altercation down the road, but if they wanted to spend some time in jail that was on them, not her. For right now though, it solved the problem, even if it was just temporary.

And that was one load off her mind.

As David was unlocking the cell door to escort Hook from the building, Emma led Gold into one of the interview rooms to uncuff him. She didn’t want them leaving at the same time, despite them having come to an agreement, and since Hook had spent the better part of the week locked up, she figured he was due for some fresh air. Gold could wait a minute.

“So let me guess,” Gold drawled, his smirking face catching Emma’s eye in the reflection of the two way mirror as she uncuffed him. “Your parents were the one to suggest this… ah, _clean slate,_ of sorts, so that way they can be absolved from their own crimes. Surprisingly smart; well, for the likes of _them,_ anyhow.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Emma gruffed, taking the handcuffs off him in a rougher manner than was probably acceptable.

“Murder is frowned upon in this realm, is it not?” Gold countered, turning around so that he could face the woman before him. “Even when it comes to acts of justice. Don’t get it wrong, dearie; your parents might be on the side of ‘good’, but in the Enchanted Forest, even good people kill. It is how order is maintained, after all. So if they were to hold others responsible for their past crimes, they would be obligated to do the same for themselves. I’m guessing that option wasn’t very appealing to them, especially after what they had done to the Queen for her crimes. Interesting, isn’t it, how this newfound leniency was implemented _after_ Regina’s banishment?”

Emma just stared at him. In all honesty, she had never given much thought to how things were run in her parents’ land, nor about what they had done to maintain order. She had heard the stories of course, but sometimes she still had trouble relating fairytales to the real world. It made her stomach twist uncomfortably in her gut, to think that her parents were responsible for death. Despite whether or not it was ‘justified’, Emma came from _this_ land, and here it was just… wrong. Really, really fucking _wrong._

Emma had just thought that they had suggested a clean slate because they already had enough on their plate as it was without hunting everyone down for past wrongdoings. Another life, another world. Well, for everyone except Regina, but the sorceress had been right when she said it had become personal more than political; Mary Margaret had a vendetta against her, and because of that she would always hold Regina to a different standard than everyone else. It was fucked up, but what was done was done, and since Emma was planning on leaving town anyway, she didn’t bother dwelling on it. 

Still, this newfound leniency now caused Emma to suspect that maybe there were ulterior motives behind the decision, and that only stood to make her feel manipulated. 

And that aggravated her. 

“Look, why don’t you just stay out of everyone’s business and maybe count your blessings instead, yeah?” Emma scowled at him. “Seriously, don’t push me today, Gold; I’m in no mood.”

“Then I suppose that this isn’t going to be a pleasant conversation,” Gold replied conversationally, leaning against the long table. He smirked at Emma’s obvious confusion.

“What?”

“The favor you owe me, dearie; I’m calling it in.”

Emma blinked at him. “Excuse me?” 

Fuck, she had completely forgotten about that. And with everything going on, right now was _so_ not the time to be doing god knows what for Rumpel-fucking- _stiltskin._ Gold was bad before the curse broke, but Emma was certain that he wasn’t called ‘The Dark One’ for no reason; so despite the fact that he no longer had access to magic, Emma still considered him to be far more dangerous.

And that made her wary of what he was about to ask of her.

“The favor you owe me, Sherriff; surely you haven’t forgotten? My sympathies if you have, but it will hold no bearing on what’s expected of you; a deal is a deal, after all.”

“Save the speech,” Emma snapped impatiently. “I get that I owe you something, and I’m not trying to get out of it, it’s just that now is _really_ not a good time.”

“Forgive me, but it’s not exactly in my nature to _care,_ ” Gold responded, his smirk growing at the look of annoyance plastered on the blonde’s face. “Now, would you like to sit down so we can discuss our arrangement, or…?”

“I’d rather stand,” Emma said shortly, folding her arms across her chest. Gold merely shrugged.

“Suit yourself, dearie.”

Gold crossed the room, taking his sweet ass time in sitting down in one of the chairs. Emma exhaled an impatient breath and leaned against the far wall, her eyebrow rising in expectation. After a moment, Gold finally spoke.

“As I’m sure you already know, the town line is still intact,” he began. “Unfortunately, this poses a problem for me. I have something that needs to be… ah, _retrieved_ from the other side, so to speak, and though I could easily go and get it myself, bringing it _back_ is where the problem lies. You see, it’s hard to get back to a place that has completely disappeared once you are no longer inside it.”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “What’s this got to do with me? If I leave, I can’t get back just as much as the rest of you.”

“That is true,” Gold continued. “However, I believe there is a way to fix the town line. All I need is access to the magic that was released in this realm when the curse broke and—”

“So you want me to tell you where the magic is, is _that_ it?” Emma cut in. “Why do you even assume I know?”

“No, that’s not it at all,” Gold told her, sounding a little impatient at being interrupted. “I _know_ where the magic resides: at Regina’s manor. It is where the curse broke, after all.”

It really did not sit well with Emma that he knew that, as she didn’t trust the man in the slightest with or _without_ magic. And with? Well that was probably a whole lot worse. But if he already knew, what the hell could she do about it? It wasn’t as though she could go and _hide_ the magic from him or anything. 

At the moment, Emma was just going to have to trust that he didn’t have destructive motives behind getting it.

“Then I’m still not seeing what you need me for,” Emma responded after a moment’s silence. 

“If you could find it within yourself to be quiet for longer than a minute, dearie, then perhaps you will,” Gold sharply replied, which only made Emma glare at him harder. She did, however, say nothing, so the man continued, “I have waited a long time – longer than you can even imagine – to find this particular person, and—”

“Wait, a _person?_ ” Emma interrupted, probably only furthering Gold’s theory that she lacked the self-discipline to keep herself quiet. “I thought it was an object or… something.”

“No, that which I am seeking is very much a _person_ , Sherriff Swan,” Gold confirmed impatiently. However he paused, taking a hesitant breath before revealing, “It’s… my son. Baelfire. He fell through a portal some time ago and ended up in this realm, although the specifics of where is still unknown to me.”

Emma felt her brain grind to a screeching halt at those words. Gold had a _son?_ Henry’s book had never mentioned that.

As the woman before him seemed to be struck mute at the revelation, Gold took the silence as a sign to continue. “The favor I am asking of you, Emma, is to find and retrieve him for me. You seem to have a certain expertise in that area, so I’m sure the task won’t prove to be _too_ difficult for someone like you.”

“You…” Emma began, looking at him like he had about six heads. She still couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that _Gold_ had actually managed to reproduce once upon a time. Emma pushed that aside for a minute though and pointed out, “But what about the boundary? Even if I find him, I can’t bring him back until you figure out a way to fix it.”

“If you give me your spare set of keys to Regina’s manor, I assure you, all will be rectified by the time you return.”

Emma nearly laughed at him with disbelief. “You really expect me to just leave when I have no guarantee of coming back? Your kid could be anywhere, which means I could be trekking halfway across the world for this. I can’t bring Henry with me if that’s the case, and you just expect me to leave him _here_ when I don’t even know if I could get back to him? No.”

“You seem to be mistaken, dearie,” Gold hissed, getting to his feet to face her. “I am not _asking._ This is what you owe me, and I really do not believe you want to find out what happens to people who break deals with me.”

Emma’s eyes flashed at the threat as Gold began to breeze past her, uncaring of her plight.

“You have twenty four hours to give me an answer. And rest assured, if you say no, you will _not_ like what will follow.”

[x]

“What do you think he’ll do if I refuse?”

Mary Margaret and David side-glanced each other, equal looks of worry painted across their faces. “Honestly, I really don’t think any of us wants to find out,” David responded. “He may not have his magic right now, but if what he says is true, then he’ll get it soon. _Damn,_ ” he cursed beneath his breath, looking frustrated with himself. “I can’t believe we didn’t realize it only resided at Regina’s. We’re going to have to keep the manor guarded, because if Jafar…” David trailed off, sighing heavily. “Damn,” he repeated again, this time much softer and more to himself.

“It’s okay, David. There has been a lot going on lately, it’s understandable that we missed it,” Mary Margaret assured him, placing a comforting hand on his forearm.

It made Emma feel a little guilty, as she had known since before Regina left that there was magic there. Or, at least, that _she_ was able to do magic while there. Still, she should have put the pieces together sooner. What if their enemies already found out? It was bad enough that Gold had, but he wasn’t the one actively trying to kill them.

At least, not yet.

“So you really think I should do it?” Emma asked, surprised that they weren’t protesting this more. But then again, they knew what Gold was capable of much more than she did. “What if I can’t get back?”

“No, I _don’t_ think you should do it,” Mary Margaret told her firmly, before a pained expression passed over her face. “But I don’t think you really have a choice. What that man does to people who break deals with him…” She trailed off, unable to meet her eye anymore.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on him while you’re gone,” David told her, trying to think of some way to make this situation a little more ideal. “Explain to Gold that he can only get access to the magic at Regina’s manor under our supervision. We’ll make sure he’s working on a way to get you home.”

“He’s sending me to find his son,” Emma responded. “So I’m pretty sure he’s legit in that sense, but yeah… I don’t exactly like the idea of him doing god knows what with the magic available to him. He may have other motives.”

“Exactly.”

Emma sighed heavily, running her fingers through her hair as she leaned back in her seat. “I really don’t like the thought of leaving you guys alone while the Evil Trio is still out there somewhere. I mean, Henry…”

“We’ll take care of him, Emma,” Mary Margaret promised her. “I swear. We will not let them harm a hair on that child’s head.”

Emma still didn’t feel completely comfortable with it, but it wasn’t as though she had any other options. “Fuck,” she breathed, covering her face with her hands before sliding them down her cheeks dejectedly. “This was so the last thing I needed right now. I don’t even know how long I’m going to be gone. What if it takes _months_ to find this guy?”

“Have more faith in your abilities, Emma,” Mary Margaret consoled her, trying to give her a small smile even though it was clear she wasn’t happy with the circumstances either. “You did this for a living once, didn’t you?”

“Yeah but this kid came through some freaking _portal._ I don’t even really have a viable place to start. All I have is his name, which I’m sure he’s changed by now. ‘Baelfire’ would kind of stick out like a sore thumb in this world, you know?”

“I’m sure you’ll find him,” David assured her, trying to boost her lacking self-confidence. Emma wished it worked.

She had spent a large portion of her life finding those who didn’t want to be found, but they all had a paper trail. This kid was from another world, and unless he was thrown into the foster or adoption system once he came here, Emma wasn’t sure she’d be able to locate him. And even _that_ was iffy, considering there was a very large possibility that Baelfire didn’t even end up in this _country._ The world was a very large place; he could have been dropped anywhere.

 _Fuck,_ Emma thought miserably, _I’m going to need a miracle._

**TBC…**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sure there are going to be some complaints about Neal being involved in this fic, but I assure you, he will not be used as some kind of jealousy tool to drive a wedge further between Emma and Regina. He actually has a purpose that will play out near the end of this fic. So much in fact, that after I figured out what I was doing with him he graduated from being called ‘stupid face’ in my notes to his actual _name,_ lol. So don’t worry about some het stuff being spewed in your face. While their past relationship will be touched upon at one point, it won’t become a large factor in the overall plot. 
> 
> Also, originally this chapter started out very differently. I’ve posted the alternate scene on my [tumblr](http://obsessionisthenewblack.tumblr.com/); you can search the “TotH” tag on my blog if you’re interested. While I do like what I wrote before, this story is already looking to be around forty chapters when completed, and I didn’t want to add anymore scenes that weren’t entirely necessary.


	12. Blame

**CHAPTER TWELVE  
Blame**

“Find my mom,” Henry had requested before she left. “Make sure she’s okay.”

Honestly, that was the very last thing that Emma wanted to do. She was hoping that she could find Baelfire and get back before Regina even realized she had left, as she knew the woman wouldn’t be happy with the choices she had made, but maybe that was a stupid wish in the first place. Regina would find out sooner or later that she had left Henry behind, and the repercussions of that weren’t going to be pretty whether they were over the phone or in person.

Emma tried to convince Henry that his mother was fine – that she had been calling nearly every day so it wasn’t as though she was lying in a ditch somewhere – but Henry looked up at her with his big hazel eyes, the corners of his lips turning down into a pout and _god damnit_ , now Emma was standing outside some three star motel in Waterville, Maine, nervously wringing her hands together as she stared at the number thirty-two etched onto one of the doors across the way. 

She probably should have called first.

Emma was aware that she was being manipulated by her son, as it was obvious Henry knew that Regina was fine and had just wanted them to _see_ each other, yet because Emma had some kind of masochistic streak within her, she obliged him. She felt terrible though, knowing that Henry was hurting because of his parents’ break up, and even though Emma knew that checking in on Regina wasn’t going to magically fix everything, she figured the kid deserved the peace of mind that this small gesture would bring him. 

And then she would be on her way come morning, because there was _no way_ she was going to stay around Regina while she looked for Baelfire.

Gathering up her courage, Emma took a deep breath and headed towards the door. She could do this; it was just one day. One day that was no doubt going to be filled with the sound of Regina’s screaming over her questionable choices, but one day no less. And really, how hard could one day be?

Famous last words.

[x]

As it turned out, one day could be _very_ hard.

There was a moment, just briefly, when Regina had opened the motel room door, that Emma foolishly allowed herself to be deluded into thinking that this might not go over badly after all. The look on Regina’s face as she took in the sight of her pierced Emma’s heart with an inconceivable warmth; something that should she had not been expecting the radical opposite, she would’ve despised for the comfort it easily brought her. Comfort was not something she wanted from Regina, yet as the woman looked at her as though the mere sight of her was some kind of welcomed gift, Emma had stupidly allowed the relief to wash over her at being accepted in a situation where she believed she would not be.

But then Regina’s gaze wandered and, not seeing Henry in tow behind her, quickly switched her expression to one of fear and accusation as she demanded, “ _Where is my son?_ ”

It felt like a kick in the stomach after believing, even for a moment, that this wasn’t going to end in argument, and Emma immediately lashed out, the word ‘my’ in Regina’s sentence bringing back old memories and old arguments that, after everything, they should have been far past. Yet still, the two of them had always been volatile at the best of times and, well, there had always been so much truth in the expression that old habits die hard.

They were living proof of that.

“How could you just _leave_ him there?!” Regina shouted, unable to accept Emma’s explanation as logical. She was pacing back and forth in her small motel room, the rapid movement making the blonde a little dizzy. Regina’s hands were wringing together, the force of her own grip making her knuckles flash white; she was panicking, and pretty severely too. 

“I wasn’t going to drag a ten-year-old kid halfway across the world, Regina!” Emma exclaimed, not understanding how Regina couldn’t see her side of this. “He has school and… fuck, I don’t know where I’m gonna end up at the end of it all, okay? _Or_ how long this is going to take me. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Baelfire could be hiding out in the slums with a crack pipe in his hand because he couldn’t deal with how different this world was, or—Jesus, what did you _expect?_ You’re always on about me being a proper parent to him and that’s what I’m trying to do, okay? The road is no place for a kid and… I mean, he needs stability, right? Storybrooke is his _home,_ Regina; at least for now.”

“ _We_ are his home!” Regina shouted, her eyes darkening in anger. “Storybrooke is now his _prison,_ thanks to you. You may not be able to get back, and then what? You should have brought him and dropped him off with me, but because your tiny little brain has been so inebriated as of late, you didn’t even think of that, did you?”

Emma faltered for a moment, because no, she really hadn’t. It just seemed like the smart thing to do, the _right_ thing to do, entrusting Henry to Mary Margaret and David. Still, the accusation in Regina’s tone as she mentioned her alcoholism darkened her expression, and she shot back with, “You know, last time I checked, you didn’t exactly have a say in Henry’s care anymore, Regina. Mary Margaret awarded _me_ custody, and I did what I damn well thought was the right thing to do. And you can think whatever the hell you want, but I _am_ going to get back to him one way or another. Unlike you, I’m not gonna drown myself in pessimism, because you know what the hell that accomplishes? _Nothing._ ”

Regina’s eyes flashed dangerously, yet she said nothing. Instead, Emma saw her cheek twitch in aggravation, the brunette having set her jaw. There was hesitation, but it was only brief before Regina took a few steps towards her, placing herself very much in Emma’s personal bubble. “How many?” she asked, her eyes searching Emma’s for truth as she posed a repeated question that the blonde had always lied to her about day after day.

Not today though. Today, she had no one to care for but herself, and thus the shame she felt lessened quite significantly. Besides, the number was not high. She was… she was getting better. Sort of.

“Two,” Emma answered evenly, despite her confusion on the abrupt change of topic. “One this morning, and a nip in the parking lot before I saw you.”

“You’re competent then?”

Emma looked at her as though she were stupid. “ _Obviously._ ” She could stand up straight and she wasn’t slurring, so…

“Good,” Regina answered, before her lips turned up into a sneer, her anger returning in a second and with a barreling force. “This will hurt then.”

Emma didn’t know why she hadn’t expected it, especially after the bullshit of custody that she had just spewed to her out of anger, yet when Regina’s open palm connected with her cheek, the force of the blow made tears sting in the back of her eyes as she gasped in pain. “Fucking _Christ!_ ” she shouted, holding her reddened flesh as she stumbled backwards. “What the—!”

“Until you have paperwork that proves otherwise, Henry belongs to _me,_ ” Regina sneered, her fierce tone silencing Emma within a moment. “Do not foolishly delude yourself into thinking that because I feel for you, that gives you power. I could have left with him and you could have done _nothing_ to stop it, and yet out of the goodness of my heart I allowed him to stay with you; not because you have a legal right to him, but because he is your son too and I knew he couldn’t bear to be separated from you for the rest of his life.”

Regina took another step towards her, getting within inches of Emma’s face as she continued, “So don’t you _dare_ stand there and preach about your mother’s ruling, when you know that it’s worthless. You said yourself at my sentencing that it was bullshit, did you not? So tell me, dear, what changed?” Off of Emma’s silence, Regina concluded for her, “ _Nothing._ You act like such a petulant child at times. I hurt you, so you hurt me; such a _mature_ reaction for someone nearing their thirties.”

“Pot, kettle, don’t you think?” Emma shot back. “What the hell do you call slapping me then? What I said might have been crap, Regina, but it still hurt you, and you _still_ retaliated. Not very mature for someone nearing their…” she hesitated for a second, doing quick math in her head before her expression changed to disbelief as Regina’s true age dawned on her. “Jesus Christ, what are you, like over _sixty_ now?”

“I’m thirty four,” Regina corrected dangerously.

Emma outwardly scoffed at that. “Yeah, but for how long?” she challenged, which was only met with a furious glare. “Wow, talk about robbing the cradle, Regina.”

Emma knew it was a low-blow, considering the fucked up circumstances of their entire lives, yet that little fact still seemed to bother Regina, and so her offhanded jab produced a furious reaction. “I will not be judged for circumstances beyond my control!” she exclaimed, her anger increasing the decibel of her tone. “It wasn’t as though I asked to fall for you, Emma; if I had my choice of things, the very _last_ person I would ever want to be tied to is the daughter of my mortal enemy. It wasn’t as though I _planned_ this.”

“You still knew what you were doing when you slept with me,” Emma responded heatedly. “You knew who I was, you knew where I came from, _who_ I came from; and yet you did it anyway!”

“Well _excuse me_ for having a sex drive that, at times, overruns my good sense like every other red-blooded human!” Regina shot back. “What the hell would you like me to say? You were attractive and I was foolish and perhaps, just _perhaps_ , I got this small, sick sense of accomplishment by bedding and corrupting Snow White’s daughter. Sleeping with you satisfied me, Emma, on quite a lot of different levels, since you seem so keen on _knowing_ what ran through my head at the beginning of it all.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open in insult. It wasn’t really surprising, but it was one thing to suspect and another to have it thrown in her face. Her stupid ‘destiny’ was already tied to her parents; she didn’t need everything else in her life to be as well. “Is that all it was for you then? Just some kind of fucked up _payback_ for my mother? Jesus, Regina, you need to be put on medication; there’s obsessive and then there’s _crazy._ ”

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Miss Swan,” Regina reminded her harshly. “Or will you be attending an AA meeting any time soon?”

Emma’s eyes flashed, her fists clenching at her sides from the harsh truth she really never wanted to face about herself. “Fuck you.”

Regina snorted in amusement, the reaction meant to only infuriate the blonde further. “You always were so eloquently spoken, my dear. I shudder to think of the poetry you would have written me, should your disastrous upbringing have taught you how to properly court someone.”

“My _upbringing?_ ” Emma exclaimed fiercely, seeing red as something inside of her snapped. She furiously pushed Regina backwards, nearly making her fall. She would have, if Emma hadn’t grabbed onto the front of her shirt, roughly pulling her towards her snarling face. “I grew up in the system, I grew up without _parents_ , without anyone to give a shit because of _you!_ So you can go shove that high and mighty attitude up your ass, because you are not and will never be better than me, Regina! If anything, you’re _worse,_ because at the end of the day, I don’t even think you care what you did to me, do you? You’re not even sorry!”

Regina was breathing heavily, her pupils dilated and lips parted as she stared at the furious expression plastered on the other woman’s face. She didn’t take Emma’s hands off of her, nor did she try to move away from her. She just took her in for a moment before exhaling a heavy breath and admitting, “No, I am not. Because if I hadn’t done what I did, then I would have never gotten Henry and… and I never would have had you.”

The emotions that Emma felt at those words were both conflicting and harsh, making her love and hate simultaneously. Furious tears stung the back of her eyes and Emma pushed Regina off of her, backing up a few steps to establish space; to run away. “You’re the most selfish fucking person I’ve ever met,” she choked out, not knowing what to say other than that. 

It _was_ a selfish reason, yet it held a truth that couldn’t be ignored. Henry wouldn’t have been born if Regina hadn’t cast the curse, and with their age difference, not to mention Regina’s feud with her parents, they would have _certainly_ never had been together otherwise. And while sometimes Emma wished things had been different, there was also a part of her that didn’t want it to be; which, at the end of the day, was the entire reason she refused the potion that Mary Margaret had offered her. Despite how shitty everything had turned out, she _was_ happy, even if it was just for a second. Emma had so few happy memories that she wasn’t so quick to destroy one of the only ones she had.

Still, that happiness seemed to come with a price, which was the hardest thing that Emma had ever had to pay. 

“How the hell am I supposed to love someone that doesn’t even regret what their revenge did to me?” Emma asked her, her voice cracking under the strain of her emotions as she pushed the hair back from her face. She didn’t know how they had gotten here; weren’t they just yelling about Henry a minute ago? But even as she thought it, Emma knew she shouldn’t have been surprised; this was a conversation, a _confrontation_ that they had both avoided, and one that was long overdue.

Still, that didn’t mean that Emma wanted to have it. Not right now. Everything was still so… she just—she wasn’t ready. She was too goddamn _sober_ for this right now.

“Of _course_ I’m sorry for the pain that it brought you,” Regina responded, looking at her as though she couldn’t understand how Emma could even think that. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

Emma looked at her incredulously, “You just said—!”

“If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Regina told her honestly. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel deeply sickened, every day of my life, that my choice hurt _you._ I love you, Emma, more than I ever thought possible, but some things matter more. _Henry_ matters more; and he always will, because he is our _child._ That’s why we came to this arrangement, wasn’t it? Because if he didn’t matter more to you, there would be no conceivable way that you would ever contemplate being around me like this. You put him above yourself, above me; and I do the same thing. Don’t ever fault me for that.”

Emma felt like she was spinning. This was too much, she didn’t—couldn’t do this right now. Yelling about Henry, that was safe. Yelling about them, _talking_ about… about everything, that was—no, she just—

“I’m not faulting you for loving him, I’m faulting you for loving _me!_ ” Emma suddenly exclaimed, rounding fiercely on the older woman as anger and blame shown in her eyes. Regina’s expression instantly masked into one of confusion.

“…What?”

That was probably a good question. Emma didn’t even know what she meant, just that she knew she meant it. 

_You, you, this is your fault, you did this. You did this to me. You did this to us._

“Emma?”

Emma’s breathing had shallowed and she backed up towards the door, holding out her hands to try to keep Regina from advancing on her. Quite suddenly, she found that she really couldn’t handle this anymore. She felt dizzy and overwhelmed and so she stuttered, “I just… I can’t do this right now, Regina. I have to—I have to go.”

_You did this. I did this. We did this. But it had to just be you, I need it to just be you._

“Emma, no, wait—” Regina tried, her own anger dissipating as she saw the look of pure panic on Emma’s face. Suddenly it looked as though she wanted nothing more than to fix it, but if that were true, wouldn’t she have fixed it when Emma practically begged her to a few weeks ago?

She couldn’t fix this. _They_ couldn’t fix this.

Had Emma been stupid, to actually believe that she could do this for the rest of her life? Before, when they didn’t talk about them, it had been easier. Hard as hell, but so much damn _easier_ than this. Emma didn’t want to know Regina’s side of it, because it blurred lines that she needed to stay solid, for the sake of her own sanity.

She wanted Regina to be sorry for what she did, yet at the same time, she didn’t want her to be at all; because if Regina didn’t care about what she had done to her, Emma would be able to hate her. God, she _needed_ to hate her, because if she didn’t, the only other choice was to love her, and she just—she couldn’t do that. It was too hard, and there never really seemed to be an in between for them.

Before, when the curse broke and Regina begged for forgiveness, Emma rationalized it as her not wanting things to change. That she was sorry for being caught, for what being caught had done to them, more than the act of what she had done. And still, in a way Regina wasn’t really sorry at all for casting the curse, but instead of being sorry for being caught, she was sorry for the repercussions that came before Emma even knew about it being cast. And that… fuck, Emma didn’t want to know that. 

She didn’t want to know that Regina actually felt badly about how she was forced to grow up, because that meant she really did care.

Which was probably stupid to realize, as _True Love_ and all that, but fuck, ignorance was bliss, and now Emma had neither. And that scared her, because there was so much more that they needed to address, so much more that needed to be said, that would probably do nothing else but force more cracks into her resolve.

Emma Swan had painted a clear picture of the Evil Queen, and Regina Mills was inevitably going to ruin the only thing, the only _separation_ that gave her a sense of sanity.

“Don’t—please don’t look for me,” Emma hastily demanded as she wrenched open the door, even though she knew that probably wouldn’t stop Regina in the slightest. “I’ll call you when I find Baelfire, okay? I just—we can’t do this right now. I’m sorry.”

And then she was gone, leaving Regina to run out after her, yet only managing to catch the taillights of her bug as Emma drove away from the motel, not able to stomach looking back.

[x]

Emma had no idea where she was.

In the end though, it probably didn’t matter. Or at least, she was far too drunk to even care that it probably really _did_ matter. It was a bar, that much was a given. At least the fourth one she had visited that night, as she figured that hopping around would make Regina less likely to find her. She knew the sorceress wasn’t stupid, and would know the minute that she ran her ass out of that motel room in a panic, that it could only mean one thing: that she was going to drink herself stupid over the next few hours. Emma had half a mind to just go to the liquor store, buy a handle of the cheapest whiskey, and then get drunk in her car, but being alone only provoked brooding and _thought_ and fuck, the last thing Emma wanted to think about was Regina.

Which was the sole reason she now found herself leaning against some random man, feeling his not-so-subtle erection straining against the seam of his jeans as she brought her umpteenth shot of the night to her lips. She smirked at him deviously after it was devoured. “Your turn,” she told him smoothly, pressing into him just enough to make her intentions clear before handing him the cue stick and walking around the other side of the pool table.

As far as not being reminded of Regina went, she couldn’t have picked someone more different. Male, rugged, and tattooed, he was everything that Regina was not. It wasn’t as though she came here looking for a vast contradiction from the disaster of her current love life, but when the opportunity presented itself, it seemed too tempting to say no.

Emma would say it was to help her forget, but in the end, the amount of liquor she had already consumed was going to make the rest of the night spotty at best once she awoke in the morning. Maybe though, if nothing else, it would help her move on. But then again, if Emma had been sober, she would have laughed at herself for that thought.

There _was_ no moving on. She was going to be tied to Regina for the rest of her life; that, it seemed, was _her_ curse.

“How ‘bout we get outta here?” the man offered instead, whose name Emma couldn’t remember for the life of her. Not that it mattered, really. He was a means to an end. Something else followed, probably some crude innuendo that Emma would be glad she missed, because it would probably sway her from doing the stupid anyhow. And, well, at this level of intoxication, stupid was all that she _wanted_ to do.

Besides, she had been here too long, and she was still paranoid that if she didn’t continue to move, Regina would find her. She had no doubt that the woman was looking for her. It wasn’t exactly in Regina’s nature to let her walk away, especially when she was worried about her, which she was bound to be.

“Sure, whatever,” Emma replied distractedly, her eyes on the door as her paranoia dominated everything else. But within a moment she forced herself to push it aside and bring her eyes back to the man that would most likely become her drunken regret come morning. 

Smirking at him, she leaned against the pool table, though more to steady herself than to look suggestive. Hopefully she managed to do both anyhow, but she doubted it. She probably looked a mess. She _felt_ like a mess. “But you gotta pay up first; you still owe me fifty bucks for whooping your ass. _Twice._ ”

Which, truthfully, she didn’t know how she managed in the first place. Emma had to squint just to try to shoot the ball straight, so either the dude had let her win, or he was _really_ bad at this game. Either way though, it didn’t matter; a bet was a bet.

The man chuckled, placing the cue stick on the table before moving around it to come up behind her. He pressed himself into her, forcing her hips further against the edge of the table as he placed his hands on her waist. “How about I pay you in trade?” he asked suggestively, to which Emma couldn’t help herself from snorting in response.

“As appealing as that sounds, I don’t pay for my sex,” Emma told him seriously, yet lightly enough to make the point without being overtly rude about it. She pushed her ass up against him, forcing him to back up a little to let her go. She might be entertaining the idea of sleeping with him, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be smothered in the meantime. “So settle up and then we can go.”

“Fine,” he relented as he took out his wallet from his back pocket. “After all, I am a man of my word…” He handed a crisp bill to her and after holding it up to the light to check its legitimacy – out of force of habit more than anything else – Emma gave him a satisfied smile as she shoved it into her jeans pocket.

“Good,” she responded with a small smirk. “Because I _really_ don’t like liars.”

“And yet you find yourself attracted to those who wish to take advantage of your inebriation. Somehow, I don’t find that to be a healthy alternative.”

Emma nearly choked on her breath and she spun around so rapidly that she lost her footing, falling into the random strangers arms that _Regina_ was standing there staring at as though she wished she could flay him alive on the spot. Still, though there was a fire in her eyes, she remained poised with her jaw set and her stature stiff.

Ridiculously, it almost impressed Emma, because she was sure that if she were the one to see someone all over Regina that she would have attacked the person without even taking a second to announce herself.

The guy’s eyes flashed at the insinuation. “Hey, I’m not some kind of _rapist;_ Ella here knows damn well what she’s doin’, so why don’t you just back off and mind your own business, lady.”

“When I want your opinion I will ask you for it, you ignorant swine,” Regina snapped, her commanding tone silencing him in an instant, though probably more from shock than anything else. “And the fact that you don’t even know her name doesn’t exactly encourage me to leave her here with you. So why don’t you run along and find another car to steal – or whatever it is that you do for fun – and leave me to take care of my wife, _Emma._ ”

Her… _what_ now?

“Regina, what the _fuck_ —”

“Be quiet,” Regina shot back, glaring at her so fiercely that Emma actually felt about an inch tall, despite that fact that she wasn’t actually cheating on her. Not _really_ , and most _definitely_ not because they were fucking _married._

“I had to leave our son with the _neighbors_ while I ran all around town looking for you, so excuse me if I’m not exactly in the mood to hear your drunken excuses,” Regina continued, apparently on some kind of mission to humiliate her now that she had already started in on this little charade. “You’re lucky I didn’t call the cops on you for taking my father’s Benz; he was _furious_ when he realized it wasn’t in the driveway. What were you _thinking,_ Emma? Is this the kind of stuff you want the adoption agency to hear about when they come on Monday? I thought we had gotten past this!”

Oh. 

My.

_God._

Emma could do nothing else but just stare at Regina, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. Was she really—this was _ridiculous,_ and yet the man she was with was buying it as though it was being fed to him with a silver fucking spoon. 

His eyes widened, apparently having enough sense to not want to get in the middle of _that_ much drama. “ _Oh._ Shit, lady. I’m—I didn’t…” he tried, but Regina hardly even spared him another glance as her hand clasped around Emma’s wrist, not exactly being gentle as she pulled her away from him.

“We’re leaving. _Now,_ ” she said shortly, not giving Emma any room for argument as she practically manhandled her out of the bar. If Emma’s brain hadn’t just been short-circuited from the spew of bullshit that had fallen from Regina’s lips, and if she hadn’t already been ridiculously inebriated, she probably would have protested it sooner, but instead it took her being dragged nearly halfway through the bar’s parking lot until she found her voice.

“Regina, what—what the ever living _fuck?_ ” Emma finally exclaimed, wrenching her arm from Regina’s grasp just in front of the other woman’s car. “We’re not together anymore, so whatever or _whoever_ I choose to do in my free time is _my_ business! I mean, _shit_ , are you mentally _damaged?_ I told you not to look for me, and yet you’re still stalking me like some kind of deranged psychopath!”

Regina whirled on her, her eyes darkening with anger and betrayal. “ _Believe_ me, Miss Swan, you do _not_ want to do this here. Now get in the _damn_ car before I have to force you into it. I’m warning you; this is not a discussion.”

Emma snorted, her vision slightly hazed as she tried to focus on Regina’s blurring form. She then spoke before she thought, and out of all of her stupid decisions tonight, that was probably the worst one yet. “Please, what are you going to do? _Make me?_ You couldn’t—” 

But the rest of Emma’s words left her as something snapped inside of Regina and she shoved her up against the side of the car, the force of it causing the alarm to start sounding out in the middle of the parking lot. The impact was so violent that it actually made her gasp out in pain as Regina pinned her to it, Emma’s intoxication making it fairly easy for the woman to overpower her. “Fuck, _damnit!_ ” the blonde exclaimed in between heavy breaths, knowing the door handle had probably left a nasty bruise on her back.

“It seems you were right,” Regina whispered fiercely into her ear, anger and sorrow tainting her words as she roughly gripped Emma’s arm once more, leaving crescent marks embedded in her skin. “Perhaps I’m not that mature either. Because you hurt me, so in the end, isn’t it logical that I hurt you…?”

Emma had to close her eyes, starting to feel nauseous from the force of impact. She didn’t say anything for a long time, just listened to Regina’s heavy breathing in her ear and the shrill whine of the car alarm, trying to still herself long enough to calm her churning stomach. Her head was pounding though, and the noise from Regina’s Benz wasn’t helping in the slightest, so finally Emma forced herself to say, “I’m sorry…”

“What was that, dear? I couldn’t quite hear you,” Regina sneered, her nails digging even deeper into Emma’s forearm, making the blonde wince with such acute familiarity. The pain was almost comforting, and god, that was _so_ fucked up, wasn’t it?

“I’m _sorry,_ okay? I just—” But frustration boiled over; her eardrums were ringing and her temples were throbbing, making it hard for her to _think,_ let alone speak, so Emma quickly cut herself off with, “Damnit, can you just turn that fucking thing _off?_ ”

Regina stared at her for a long moment, teeth clenched as she seemed to debate on that before ultimately taking out her keys and pressing a button. The alarm finally shut off and Emma breathed a sigh of relief, slumping all of her weight against the car.

But Regina wasn’t finished with her. “Say it again,” she demanded, still not content on Emma’s drunken apology that she wasn’t even sure she meant.

Still, Emma reiterated, “I’m _sorry_ , Regina.”

Regina looked at her, taking in her expression, before asking, “ _Why?_ ” The question was a test that Emma wasn’t prepared for, and an answer came without thought because, fuck, she really was just too drunk to think anymore anyway.

“Because I’m yours.”

That probably wasn’t the right answer. Or maybe it really _was_ , but it definitely wasn’t the one Regina was expecting. She faltered for a moment, looking like she was actually going to protest that before thinking better of it. Breathing heavily with her subsiding anger, she finally released Emma and stepped away from her.

“Just get in the car,” she told her shortly, seemingly unable to come up with a proper response to what Emma had said.

And Emma, beginning to feel her intoxication take her over completely, just did what she said, because in the end, when she was like this, she still trusted Regina more than she trusted herself.

**TBC…**


	13. Pain

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN  
Pain**

Regina’s heart was burning in her chest as she stared straight out at the road in front of her, unable to stomach even glancing in Emma’s direction for fear that she might very well lash out and get them into a horrible accident. Despite the fact that she was certain that nothing had really even happened with that man, seeing the two of them together had made her stomach violently churn with betrayal. It sickened her, to think of that man’s hands being on her, as though he was worthy enough to even breathe the same _air_ as Emma, let alone touch her as though he owned anything that she truly was.

Perhaps, after everything, Regina no longer deserved her, but she _damn_ well deserved her more than that filth. That man didn’t even know her _name,_ he just looked at Emma as an easy lay because she was inebriated past all sane thought, and that was not something that Regina would just _allow_ to happen, regardless of the fact that she was the woman’s ex-lover. No one deserved to be taken advantage of in that way.

Of course, drunken Emma probably had a different perspective when it came to consent, but when morning came, along with the inevitable hangover, Regina was certain that her tune would change. It was rare that anyone didn’t regret what they had done come the next day when they were _this_ intoxicated.

Still, the thought that Emma might regret trying to pick up the man in the first place didn’t sate her fury. In the end, it still didn’t erase what she had seen, nor what she knew would’ve happened should she not have stepped in to stop it.

Emma was cradling her head in her hand, leaning against the passenger side door as she stared down at the floor, probably to avoid getting car sick. “Where are you taking me?” she asked after at least five minutes of silence, the words coming out slurred and hostile, despite how utterly exhausted she looked.

“Don’t speak to me,” Regina told her shortly, as she was certain that would lead to nowhere good while they were _driving._ She did not want to get into an altercation with her while on the road.

Emma laughed bitterly before closing her eyes, rubbing her temples. “Fine, whatever,” she grumbled. “I don’t really care anyway.”

Silence consumed the car once more, and ten minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of the motel Regina had been staying at. Once the car had come to a stop Emma finally looked up, the cease of movement allowing her to actually become aware of things again without feeling ill. “So eager to get me into your bed again…” she taunted, her drunken idiocy truly knowing no bounds. Regina reached over; practically pushing Emma as she violently unbuckled the woman’s seat belt.

“You will be sleeping on the couch,” she told her shortly before opening her door and exiting the car. Despite Emma’s taunt, it seemed the information wasn’t to her liking and her face soured.

“Figures,” she mumbled bitterly before getting out of the car, nearly stumbling in the process. As she steadied herself with a hand on the hood, Regina’s eyes flashed.

“What, would you have liked me to hold your hair as you empty your stomach into the toilet, or cradle you as you fall into a fitful, drunken sleep?” Regina asked, her tone mocking and angry. “I am not your _caretaker,_ Miss Swan. You will deal with the repercussions of your actions on your own; I am merely here to make sure you don’t end up killing yourself in the process.”

“And if you hadn’t seen me all over someone else, would you have had that same rule?” Emma challenged as she followed Regina to her door. “Or are you just pissed because that when I was drunk and horny, I didn’t come to _you?_ ”

Regina’s hand froze with the key in the door and it took all of her effort to not turn around and backhand the woman across the face. Their relationship had always been terribly violent, but there was a point where that violence uneased her, and when it was done while _not_ in their bed, it didn’t sit right with her. Still, neither of them really had the best control over their instinctual reactions, and so Regina’s hand noticeably twitched while holding the key.

Still, she did not move to strike her, and she silently praised herself for that, even though it was probably horrible when one had to praise themselves for not striking the person that they loved. Neither of them, however, had ever really learned to love in a healthy manner. Perhaps in time that would change, but that time was not now, and so she allowed herself to feel _good_ about not doing something that could probably fall under the category of domestic abuse.

“I very much doubt that you were horny; just desperate enough to not care _how_ you ran away from your problems, so long as you ran away from them.”

That made Emma falter for a moment, Regina’s words seeming to stun her into silence as she took a moment to contemplate the truth in them. Regina took that moment to open the door fully before ordering, “Get inside.”

Emma obliged, apparently unable to find anything to say in her defense. 

As Regina closed the door behind her, Emma violently ripped her shirt off over her head, throwing it onto the ground as she stumbled over to the couch, apparently expecting that Regina would provide her with some bed clothes. But as she tried to tear off her jeans, she only ended up tripping on them, falling into a heap onto the couch as she swore loudly.

“If you’re trying to entice me, dear, I think you’ve missed the mark,” Regina said, not even bothering to hide her amusement at the woman’s current predicament. She knew that wasn’t Emma’s intention at all, but she was trying to bother her because she was still bitter about everything that had happened, and she hit the mark dead on.

“Go fuck yourself,” Emma slurred before waving her legs in the air, the momentum pushing the rest of the fabric off her ankles and throwing it clear across the room. Regina watched them land with a raised eyebrow.

“I’d say that’s actually in your future, considering you did not get what it was that you were after tonight,” she bit back, crossing the room to gather up Emma’s discarded clothing. Emma shot her a furious glare.

“If I did, would you _watch?_ ” she challenged angrily, trying to throw Regina off. But the woman merely glanced at her as she folded up the garments, placing them over the edge of the desk chair.

“Probably.”

Emma blinked heavily, having not expected that answer in the slightest. “You— _what?_ ”

“Would probably watch you, dear,” Regina reiterated, inwardly pleased with herself for how confused she had managed to get Emma within the span of a second. She enjoyed having the upper hand, despite how it came about. “That’s what masochists do, do they not? Torture themselves. I would figure you, of all people, would understand that. It was the reason we came to be together, after all.”

Emma just gaped at her, and Regina had to turn away to hide the self-satisfactory smirk that graced her features as she rummaged in one of her bags for proper clothing for the woman on her couch. “Do I need to get you a waste bin?” she asked as she turned, a silken set of pajamas now in her hands.

“…Huh?”

“Do you feel like you’re going to vomit?” Regina asked slowly, as though she were speaking to perplexed child. Emma had about the maturity of one while in this state, after all.

“I… no,” Emma finally said, still seemingly stuck on the masturbation comment from earlier. But as Regina held out the clothes she still took them, mumbling a soft, begrudging ‘thanks’ for the garments. 

“Good,” Regina responded shortly, gathering up her own night clothes before heading towards the bathroom to change. “Then get some sleep; we’ll talk about your idiocy in the morning.”

[x]

At six thirty eight in the morning, Regina was awoken by the sound of someone crying.

It took a moment for her to remember who it was that occupied her room, but when she did she immediately froze, not wanting to alert Emma to her awakened state. She very much doubted that the woman wanted to be aware of the fact that someone was bearing witness to her weakness.

It had been over four hours since she had put Emma to bed, and she knew that the woman had passed out by the sound of her light snoring not a half hour later, finally allowing Regina to fall soundly asleep as well. She wondered for a moment if Emma had gotten sick and that was what had awoken her, but vomit did tend to have a very distinctive smell, and the small room that they occupied wasn’t tainted by it. 

Regina doubted the amount of time that had passed had allowed Emma to sober up completely though, which was probably the only reason why she was crying. Sober Emma would have had more willpower to stop it, as she had never liked succumbing to that emotion in the first place, _especially_ when there were people around to witness it. 

They both had that in common, yet at the end of the day, they still tended to fall apart at the very worst of times.

“Fuck, _fuck,_ ” Emma breathed into the stillness of the room, her words muffled by a slew of tears. “Stop it.”

Regina bit her lower lip, instinctively feeling terrible for her, despite how angry she still was. Emma sounded so broken, yet so furious with herself that she allowed herself to feel anything at all. Although she was prone to doing the very same thing, when on the other side, Regina was aware of how fucked up that was. Sometimes it was better to feel horribly, rather than to never feel at all, because that… that wasn’t living. 

But then again, ever since the curse broke, neither of them had really been _living_ , had they? Merely existing.

It took quite a while, but finally Emma’s sobs subsided, being replaced by shuddered inhales of breath as she sat back against the edge of the couch, wiping at her tear-stained cheeks as she calmed herself down. Silence enveloped the room once more, and Regina tried to will herself back to sleep, but Emma’s hoarse voice broke the stillness in the air.

“Regina.”

The brunette froze beneath her covers.

Emma took a hesitant breath before continuing, “Regina, I… I know you’re awake.”

Regina closed her eyes, silently berating herself for a moment for not being quieter, before finally opening them once more as she hoisted herself to a seated position. She looked out across the small room and even in the dark, she could make out the back of Emma’s figure. The woman had her knees pulled to her chest and was staring out the far window, though probably only because she didn’t want to turn and have Regina see how bloodshot her eyes were.

Still, it seemed she heard Regina move and so she asked softly, “If I asked you to do something for me, would you do it?”

Regina hesitated for a moment before answering, “That depends.”

“On?” Her voice was so distant and detached, her sorrow seeming to weigh heavy on every inch of her being. She sounded so terribly defeated.

“On what it is that you’re asking me to do.”

Emma exhaled a long breath, her patience not very content on that answer. The seconds ticked by until Emma finally spoke, having decided to ask it anyway, despite not knowing if she would be allotted her request. “I need you to hurt me.”

Regina felt her breath catch in her throat at those words. “…What?”

Emma turned to face her then, her bloodshot eyes and splotchy cheeks making her look so much younger than she really was. She caught Regina’s gaze in the dark and instead of repeating the question, as she was more than aware that Regina had heard it, she asked, “Will you?”

“I…” Regina tried, though found she was at a loss for words. She hadn’t expected Emma to ask that of her; it seemed out of nowhere, despite knowing the woman’s previous coping mechanisms with past abuse. Regina had _thought_ she had found a new way to deal with everything that she held inside, yet it seemed that wasn’t doing the job anymore. “Why would you even ask that of me?”

“Because you’re the only one I trust to do it.”

 _That_ made Regina feel something that she desperately wished she did not feel, for it made her want to give Emma everything that she asked for and more. But what she was requesting screamed unhealthy, even though, in the end, it was what they had always been good at.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she told her finally, softly, unable to hold anger any longer for the broken woman in front of her. She had never seen Emma so completely unhappy before; it seemed like the woman had finally lost all her will to even try anymore.

Emma looked at her for a long moment before raising herself up, coming off the couch and moving to stand at the end of Regina’s bed. She didn’t say anything and neither did the brunette, and after a few long seconds of silence, Emma grasped the hem of her nightshirt and pulled it up over her head.

“Emma…” Regina warned softly.

“I need to feel something else, Regina,” Emma begged softly as she continued to defy her wishes, reaching behind her to unhook her bra. As the garment fell to the floor, Regina felt herself take a sharp inhale of breath at the sight of Emma’s breasts. It seemed like ages since she had last seen the woman’s body. “Just for… just for a fucking _second,_ okay? Maybe it’s stupid, but I really don’t _care_ anymore. Everything’s already fucked up with us, and it’s not like this wouldn’t have happened a month or a year from now anyway.”

That was probably true, as they were going to be living in close proximity to each other at least until Henry was grown, and they were bound to each other in such a way that true separation would never really be possible. Still, this was not the way Regina wanted this to come about.

“You’re still drunk,” Regina protested, yet her words seemed to fall on deaf ears as Emma pulled off her pajama bottoms, her underwear along with them. And then she stood there, completely nude, and Regina completely forgot how to _think_ , let alone speak.

“Not enough to not know what I’m doing,” Emma answered her, knees hitting the bed before she began to crawl her way over to her. “And definitely not enough to blame you for it later.”

Regina’s brain seemed to finally catch up to the situation and she tried to move away from her, still hesitant about doing something that, despite its appeal, she was certain was going to make everything worse. But Emma quickly straddled her waist, keeping her in place as she captured the brunette’s wrists in a fierce grip.

“Fuck me, Regina,” she softly implored, looking deep into her eyes. “ _Hurt_ me. I know you want to.”

Regina felt her breathing shallow, her gaze drinking up every dip and curvature of the woman’s body atop her. Wetting her dry lips, she forced herself to be rational. “That’s not the point…”

Regina had never hated a single sentence more in her entire life. Every breath made Emma’s chest rise and fall, and Regina wanted nothing more than to trace the curvature of each breast with her tongue. She had convinced herself that she would never have this again, would never bear witness to the beauty of Emma’s body, and now that she had, it killed her to turn the temptation away.

“Then what is?”

Regina exhaled a defeated breath, not really wanting to admit this, but knowing it would do more damage to lie to her. “If I fuck you,” she breathed softly, “I’ll never want to stop.”

A small smile twitched at the edges of Emma’s lips; she knew she was winning. “Then don’t,” she answered, leaning down to drag the soft edges of her lips against the older woman’s throat. Regina swallowed hard before forcing herself to turn away from her.

“ _Emma,_ ” she implored desperately, unable to look at her. Regina knew her resolve was cracking in half and just _looking_ at all the woman had to offer her would only stand to further its inevitable demise. “You’re not thinking. You may not care right now, but come tomorrow I’m sure that you’re going to remember what it is that I’ve done, and you’re not going to be able to put your desire for pain above that. And then what will that leave us with?”

“A memory,” Emma breathed against her skin, her tongue trailing a long line from the base of her neck to the shell of her ear, causing the woman beneath her to shiver in need. “That’s all we have in the end anyway, isn’t it?”

“I want more than that.”

The words had come without thought and they made Emma pause for a moment, her uneven breathing tickling the brunette’s ear. “We’ll never have it,” Emma told her finally, and in that moment, it sounded as though she might actually regret the truth of her own words. Regina felt her throat constrict, and Emma seemed to sense that she had upset her, so she quickly grasped the woman’s chin in her hand, turning her head to face her. 

“Regina… Regina, look at me,” she implored desperately, as though she were actually afraid that maybe this wouldn’t happen at all. As though if it didn’t, Emma wouldn’t know what to do with herself. It scared her, the possibility of true rejection. She felt like she had nothing left but this. “I’ve… I’ve been so _shitty_ to you, you know? I want to hurt you because you hurt me, and then you want to hurt me because I hurt _you,_ and it’s… it’s fucking insane, isn’t it? And it’s never going to stop, it’s just gonna… we’re just gonna keep destroying each other over and over again until we fucking _die_ and can’t we just—wouldn’t it be _better_ if we just did it in this way? Then we wouldn’t have to hurt anymore, Regina. Don’t you want that?”

“You’re an idiot,” Regina whispered, though her heart wasn’t in the insult as the look of desperation on the blonde woman’s face cut through her like a knife. She wanted to fix it, and she hated herself for that, because she knew she was going to do it. She was going to give Emma what she wanted, because some small part of her foolishly hoped that maybe she was right; because in the end, Regina didn’t want to hurt anymore either. “It’s still going to hurt. It will always hurt.”

“Yeah,” Emma breathed, lightly leaning her forehead against hers as she ran her fingers through dark tresses. “But it’ll hurt in a different way; a _bearable_ way.”

It was such a foolish belief, and yet Regina found herself wishing it were true as she allowed her hand to brush over the smooth skin of Emma’s thigh, the tautness of her abdomen, and the softness of her breasts. Emma exhaled a shuddered breath, her grip on Regina’s hair tightening as she closed her eyes, pressing her face closer towards hers until they were only a breath apart.

“This is a horrible decision,” Regina whispered against her lips, yet the more uneven Emma’s breathing became, the more she found she needed to touch her. “And I’m going to hate you for it in the morning.”

Emma bit her bottom lip, stifling a soft whimper as Regina’s fingertips brushed against a hardened nipple. “I hate myself every morning,” she breathed in admittance, the tone much too light to carry the burden that those words held. “So you’re more than welcome to join the club.”

Regina’s heart constricted painfully in her chest at those words. “Emma…”

“ _No,_ ” Emma told her fiercely, not wanting to delve into something of that nature. Not now. Her grip tightened on the hair at the base of Regina’s neck, pulling her head back so forcefully that she elicited a sharp gasp from the woman beneath her. “We’re done talking; we’ve always been shit at it anyway.”

There were words, but they were lost against the blonde’s lips as Emma kissed her with so much passion, so much raw _desperation_ that she milked all competent thought from Regina’s mind as she sank back against the pillows, allowing the woman to devour her whole. 

Emma tore at her clothing, popping buttons clean off as needy hands found a home against heated flesh. Regina arched her back as she grasped for the woman atop her, her moan being swallowed as her fingernails scraped helplessly against the skin of Emma’s back. It had been so long since she had been touched by her in this way that it felt almost foreign, despite the familiarity that Emma’s teeth brought her as they sunk into her bottom lip, drawing blood from the wound she had inflicted.

Regina cried out at the sharp pain and pounded the base of her palm against Emma’s shoulder before harshly digging her nails into her upper arm and dragging them downwards, tearing the flesh and leaving red, angry marks in her wake. “Fuck,” Emma gasped, squeezing her thighs around Regina’s hips as she bucked helplessly at the feeling of bliss that the pain brought her. “ _Yes,_ Regina…!”

The proof of Emma’s pleasure, the sound of her own name falling from the other woman’s lips with such reckless abandon, destroyed any and all thought of ever hearing anything but, and Regina pushed the woman off of her, allowing Emma’s back to collide with the bed sheets before she pinned the blonde beneath the weight of her body. It wasn’t often that she topped, but she so badly needed to own everything that was once deemed hers that she couldn’t bear waiting for Emma’s innate dominance to allow it. 

“You really are an idiot,” Regina reminded her fiercely, looking down at Emma’s flushed face and parted lips as she held the blonde down by her wrists. She pressed her thigh between Emma’s legs, feeling the woman’s wetness seep through her silken bottoms as Emma groaned beneath her. “But then I suppose you’re _my_ idiot, aren’t you?”

“Forever, apparently,” Emma breathed helplessly, her eyes falling closed and her hips searching for more friction as Regina’s mouth found a home around one of the stiff peaks of her nipples. Emma gasped as Regina bit down, the sound being followed by a whimper as the brunette’s tongue traced the area she had marked. “ _Lucky you…_ ”

The sarcastic tone of Emma’s words made Regina’s head snap up and she roughly took the blonde’s chin in her hand, forcing her to look at her. “Stop it,” she demanded. “Stop hating yourself. You have no reason to.”

“Pretty sure I didn’t ask for _therapy,_ Regina,” Emma snapped breathlessly, irritation clouding her eyes before she decided to disallow Regina’s acquired dominance, using all of her strength to practically throw the other woman off of her. 

Regina exhaled a small sound of surprise as suddenly Emma’s hands were grasping for her bottoms, roughly tearing them from her body without even a word of warning. Her palms then slapped in the inside of the woman’s thighs as she forced Regina’s legs apart, causing the sorceress to have to leverage herself against the headboard with one of her hands so that Emma didn’t cause the top of her head to crash violently against it.

Regina had a response to that, yet it was lost to her as Emma pressed the length of her body against hers, nearly folding the brunette in half as she draped her legs over her shoulders. Their lips crashed together, the need behind the action causing it to become rather sloppy as teeth clanged together and tongues fought for a control that this damaging situation had absolutely none of. Emma groaned low in her throat, her grip on one of Regina’s ankles tightening as she pushed into her further, feeling the brunette’s sticky arousal cover the base of her abdomen. 

“Damn,” Emma softly admired, her hot breath tickling the soft skin of Regina’s cheek as she purposely moved her body downwards, allowing Regina’s arousal to coat more of her skin. The brunette’s finger wrapped around the spokes of the headboard, her breathing ragged and desperate as she pushed her hips firmer against the woman atop her. Emma chuckled softly, her lips finding the base of her ear as she inquired softly, “Have you even touched yourself since we were last together?”

Regina bit her lower lip, her head becoming rather hazy as she felt her walls tighten with need, pushing out another gush of fluid that coated Emma’s pale skin. “Once,” she breathed in admittance, feeling Emma’s hand begin to snake between their bodies. The blonde didn’t ask for elaboration, for perhaps she knew that Regina hadn’t since because when she did, she thought of her. And in the end, that was more painful than to never feel any sense of pleasure at all.

Emma’s middle finger slipped inside of her easily, prompting a low groan to escape Regina’s throat as she felt two others quickly follow, stretching her to accommodate the welcomed invasion. “Emma,” the brunette panted desperately, feeling her heart begin to pound in her throat as she remembered quite vividly how it felt to be owned by the woman between her sheets. Turning her head, Regina buried her face into the inside of her elbow, her lips parting as loud gasps started to fill the stillness of the room, Emma having finally begun to move firmly within her.

It felt so natural, so fulfilling and so utterly perfect, that it nearly made her want to cry.

Emma grabbed onto the headboard with one hand, her fingers brushing against Regina’s whitening knuckles as she used the leverage to push her entire body against the back of her hand, causing her fingers to delve deeper, firmer, harder into Regina’s shuddering form. The brunette bit back a cry, her teeth scraping helplessly over the inside of her arm as she shut her eyes tightly, wanting to focus on nothing else but sound of Emma’s labored breathing, and the feeling of the woman that she loved so desperately owning her once more.

“Fuck, oh fuck,” she chanted breathlessly against her skin, choking back a sob of ecstasy as the force of Emma slamming within her made the pleasure border on painful. But Regina ate it up with abandon, her hands trembling before she tightened her grip on the headboard spokes, holding onto them as though they were her last shred of sanity in this world. 

And then there were fingertips dancing along the hollow of her throat, asking an unspoken permission for more control as Emma’s other hand twisted within her, making the brunette nearly choke on her breath as she knew, in that moment, that she probably would allow Emma to do whatever she wished to her anyway. A nod followed a few uneven gasps and fingers closed around her throat, holding Regina firmly against the pillows as Emma loomed over her, looking down at the woman she was supposed to hate, yet would never truly be able to.

Her eyes pierced into her soul and Regina opened her own, looking into the crashing waves of her irises. Her pupils dilated, lips parted, and breasts heaving, Emma looked as though she were becoming completely unraveled, the lust she felt for the woman beneath her darkening her gaze as she pressed just a little bit firmer on the brunette’s throat. “Tell me when,” she demanded, her breath tickling Regina’s oversensitive lips as she continued to push and twist within her, drawing out sounds Regina hadn’t remembered that she was even capable of making.

Her brain became hazy as the pleasure began to overwhelm her, and the flat of Regina’s palm began to slam against the headboard over and over, hips frantically begging for Emma to go faster, deeper, harder. She cried out the blonde’s name, her eyes falling closed once more as she felt her orgasm begin to wash over her. “Now…!” she gasped, and Emma’s grip tightened painfully against her windpipe, closing it completely as she forced the last bit of breath from Regina’s lungs.

Regina couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, she couldn’t move. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her body convulsed beneath Emma’s form, the lack of oxygen intensifying the feeling between her thighs so much that she thought for a moment she would pass out. But Emma had always known how much was too much, and just as the blackness began to seep in and claim her as its own, the blonde let go of her throat, making Regina frantically gasp for air as her body trembled in the aftermath of pleasure.

Emma withdrew from her and moved to the left, allowing Regina’s body to go limp as she turned her head to the side, burying her face in her pillow as she softly whimpered from the loss of contact. But then lips were on her throat, Emma softly caressing the dark bruises she had made with her tongue. Regina was still struggling to breathe, as it felt as though she still had a phantom hand wrapped around her throat, holding her down just enough for dominance, but not enough to rob her of anymore breath. Still, finding it was hard, and Emma tried to be patient as she allowed Regina to gather her bearings, but within moments she had already straddled her thigh, pushing her hips against her olive skin to get some much needed friction of her own.

“You don’t have to move,” Emma panted, the desperation for release and the difficulty to find patience making her squeeze tightly to her own thigh, the fingernails embedding in her skin. “Just… can you breathe yet…?”

Regina took a deep breath to confirm, and although it still felt a little tight, she responded with a nod. Emma wasted no time as she practically scrambled up her body, and Regina, already aware of what she was planning to do, straightened out so she could lay flat on her back. Emma faced down the brunette’s body as she spread her legs on either side of her head, her fingers gripping Regina’s hips so hard she was sure to leave bruises later.

Regina wanted to take a moment to appreciate the sight spread out before her, but Emma’s thighs were glistening and a soft whimper of impatience fell from her lips, so instead she decided to give Emma what it was that she desired. Dragging her fingernails up her thighs, Regina left red, angry lines in her wake before finding her destination and parting Emma’s folds, allowing her tongue to trace a slow path down her dripping center. The sensation made Emma groan deep in her throat and she pitched forward, her fingernails digging into the skin of Regina’s thighs as she panted out her desperation.

“Fuck, Regina, don’t tease me…”

Regina chuckled, the sound vibrating against the skin of Emma’s thigh as she dragged her lips upwards again, feeling the need to tease her for just _one_ last moment before giving her that which she craved. “It’s not often that I get to hear you beg,” she murmured, her breath tickling Emma’s oversensitive flesh, making the woman’s opening clench before her eyes.

“Don’t get cocky,” Emma breathed, a small smirk playing at the edges of her mouth as she brushed her lips over Regina’s stomach and her fingers over her clit, making the brunette twitch beneath her in need. “I still top you.”

“Because I let you.”

“Oh, plea— _fuck,_ ” Emma gasped, cutting herself off mid-sentence as Regina’s lips wrapped around the tender bundle of nerves, sucking hard as the tip of her tongue teased the sensitive spot hidden beneath. Emma fell completely against her, her mouth opening in pleasure as she pushed her hips further against Regina’s face. Her head was resting against the brunette’s thigh, and every gasp, every pant, every moan of pleasure tickled Regina’s center, making her squirm and whimper beneath her until finally, Emma got the point, and buried her face between her legs.

Regina moaned into her, vibrating the blonde’s center as she lightly scraped her teeth against tender flesh, making Emma gasp out and grip her thighs harder. And then her mouth was on her again, milking every sound that she could manage from the woman atop her, as a part of her was frightened that, despite Emma’s insistence that they would always find themselves in this place, that it could still very well be the last time.

Regina never wanted it to end. She wanted to fuck Emma for the rest of her life, should it never mean that she had to part from her. And it seemed, in the end, Emma had the same idea, for when they had finally been sated it wasn’t until early afternoon, the two of them finally falling into each other as they gasped for breath, exhaustion overtaking them. And when Regina covered Emma’s body with her own, laying a protective arm around her waist, she tried to force herself to stay awake, because she knew that the moment that she awoke, nothing would ever feel this nice again.

**TBC…**


	14. Shame

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN  
Shame**

“Shit,” Emma breathed, the realization of what the hell she had just done hitting her like a barreling freight train. “ _Shit._ ”

The blonde sat nude on the edge of Regina’s bed, her fingers digging into the mattress beneath her as she stared at the far wall, as though she somehow hoped to find the answers she craved hidden beneath the plaster. It left her with nothing however, except for the sound of her own harsh, conflicting thoughts screaming within her head.

“I would appreciate it if you had your morning after regret where I couldn’t hear you, dear.”

Emma nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Regina’s voice, and the movement brought her off the bed and to her feet as she rounded on the woman. She had thought she was still asleep. Although Regina’s voice was poised and even, her face told another story. The woman couldn’t even look at her as she gathered the sheets to her chest, covering herself as though she were afraid her nudity would freak Emma out now that the dust had settled and reality had set in.

It was ridiculous though, as Emma had seen Regina naked more than any other person in her entire life.

“N-No, it’s not—” But her voice tremored and it sounded unconvincing, so Emma cleared her throat and looked away from her. “I just… headache,” she finished lamely, which wasn’t a lie. But then again, lately, she’d _always_ had a headache right when she’d first woken up. Emma had just learned to accept it as another part of her daily routine, however, as she was certain that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

The blonde’s eyes found the far window and she looked at the darkening sky; it must be well past dinner time by now. Emma wasn’t sure when they had both fallen asleep, but it couldn’t have been that long ago. She didn’t feel well-rested in any sense. “Besides…” Emma continued, “I don’t think it counts as morning after regret when the sun is setting.”

“Semantics,” Regina responded, her voice sounding hoarse and thick, almost as though it was painful to even utter the word. It made Emma look at her, and she noticeably cringed as she took in the sight of the brunette’s throat. The bruises her fingers had made the night before were dark and angry looking, and if Emma hadn’t known what had happened, she would have thought that someone had tried to kill her. The rest of Regina’s body wasn’t exactly unmarred either though, and for that matter, neither was her own. They both had left their mark on one another, in the only way that they ever really knew how.

Silence enveloped the room and the two women looked at each other, assessing the damage they had caused, second guessing the decision they had made. Emma felt sick to her stomach, though whether it was from the amount of liquor she had consumed the night before or what she had done thereafter, she didn’t know. What she _did_ know though was that it was her own damn fault, and the fact that she couldn’t blame Regina for it all made her feel like crawling into a corner with a bottle of JD, idiotically wishing to revert back to the failing coping mechanism that had brought her into Regina’s bed in the first place. 

Alcohol was supposed to dull her pain, yet in the end, it had only caused her more. Emma looked at herself in the mirror each morning and hated what she saw, despised this shadow of a person that she had become, and last night, at the time, it had made perfect sense, to try an alternative means to dealing with her anger, blame, and incessant self-hatred. Now though, as she looked at the pain that crossed over Regina’s expression as she expected nothing but rejection from the woman before her, Emma realized her decision only stood to make her hate herself just a little bit more.

Nothing, _nothing_ she did anymore was right. Nothing she did anymore would ever fix what Regina had first broken, and what Emma herself had ultimately destroyed beyond repair.

So why even bother?

Maybe it was stupid anyway, to think that she could get away from her alcoholism so easily. Trading one addiction for another might work when the addiction was mental, but Emma’s trembling, clammy hands and pounding headache told another story. The alcohol that was previously in her system had completely dissipated, leaving her feeling sick until she could find a way to replenish it; which, at the moment, she could not do.

“I should probably…” Emma tried, but ultimately ended trailing off and nodding her head towards the door as a way of explanation. It was awkward, waking up next to Regina after everything that had happened between them. Emma didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t even know if it was mistake. The act itself, probably not; but the emotional baggage that they had both made exponentially heavier by doing it? That shit was probably going to end up crushing them. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

Emma began to grab her discarded clothes off the ground with shaking fingers, feeling the need to just run from it all again – run from _her_ – but two demanding words suddenly filled the small motel room, and Emma instinctively froze because of their tone.

“Sit. _Down._ ”

Emma blinked heavily before turning towards Regina, who was now standing not three feet from her, sheet still clutched to her chest. She did _not_ look happy. “Uh…” Emma stumbled, not exactly expecting this. “What?” 

“Do you really believe that I’m just going to let you walk out of here?” Regina asked her, her eyebrow arching as she stared Emma down, successfully making her feel about an inch tall from the judgment the look held. Gone was the woman who looked fearful of being tossed aside the morning after, as she was suddenly replaced by a version of Regina Mills that looked as though she had a purpose, and as Emma was pretty sure that that purpose was to yell at her for the better part of the next hour, she liked this version a whole lot less.

Emma opened her mouth to speak, but she wasn’t given the chance to.

“Not only are you without a car and an actual way to _leave_ , Miss Swan – as I was the one to drive you back from that disgusting excuse for an establishment last night – but I distinctly remembering telling you that we would talk about your idiocy come morning,” Regina continued, advancing on her so that Emma had no place to go but backwards – right towards the couch. “Now, it might be a little bit later than I was actually intending to have this conversation, but we _are_ going to have it, so I suggest you take a seat, less you wish to make this even more painful for yourself than it’s already going to be.”

Well, this really fucking sucks.

Wringing her hands tightly together, Emma nearly tripped over one of her shoes as she continued to withdraw until the back of her legs hit the upholstery, still trying to formulate some kind of reason to leave that didn’t center around ‘I need to drink something before I get really sick’, because that was the last thing Regina needed to know about. “I…”

“ _Sit._ ”

Emma sat.

The automaticity of it was kind of humiliating, to be honest. It was a glaring reminder that while Emma may top in bed, everywhere else, it was Regina who dominated with ease. 

Emma gritted her teeth together, aggravated by how easily her body just reacted to Regina’s demand. Still, the glaring issue of not having access to her car, nor remembering where the hell it was (seriously, Emma couldn’t give you the bar’s name right now even if you had a gun to her head – the night was now just one big, intoxicated blur), made it perfectly clear that despite how badly she wanted to, there was no way she was getting out of this.

This thought caused her to discreetly wipe her clammy palms on the edge of the couch, just before she gripped the fabric, trying to keep her hands from shaking where Regina could notice. Still, the position was a small comfort, as she was pretty damn sure that if she didn’t get anything in her soon, Regina was gonna see just how bad off she was, which… could _not_ happen. 

Some things were just private.

“Look, as much fun as getting yelled at for the better part of the next hour sounds, _look at me,_ Regina,” Emma responded hastily, trying to give herself some time to think about what the hell she was going to do. “I need to shower at least, okay? Just give me that and then we can talk.” Her right leg was bouncing about a thousand miles an hour, despite her attempts to stop it, and her anxiousness did not go unnoticed by Regina, whose gaze flickered down to the offending limb.

“Are you alright?” Regina asked, tilting her head to the side as she assessed Emma’s current state, which only made the blonde practically slap her hand on her knee and press down, trying to make herself stop.

“I’m _fine_ , okay? I just need to shower; I feel disgusting and I probably smell even worse than that. So can I just…?” Emma gestured erratically towards the bathroom, clearly impatient.

Regina stared her down for a few more seconds, debating her request, until she finally conceded with a soft, “Alright.”

Emma practically flew off the couch.

She had expected Regina to put up more of a fight, to distrust that she might run, but once Emma was in the bathroom and the door was closed behind her, Emma realized why she hadn’t: the room didn’t have any windows. “Damnit,” she cursed under her breath, not knowing what to do now. 

The bathroom was neat and orderly, and despite the fact that it was attached to a motel room that’s entire existence screamed temporary, Regina had clearly made a point to make herself as much at home there as she could. There was a small shelf in the corner where she kept all her toiletries and miscellaneous medications, and as Emma sat herself down on the toilet seat with her head in her hands, her gaze wandered to the bottom shelf where something caught her eye.

Within seconds her hand reached out, pushing the aspirin and a package of band aids out the way to get to what it was that she was looking at. Her fingers clasping around the bottle, Emma brought it towards to her, trying to ignore the little voice in her head that was screaming how there was low, and then there was _pathetic._

Emma’s eyes scanned the label of the NyQuil bottle and in the bottom left corner, found what it was that she was looking for; alcohol: twenty five percent. Though her anxiety lessened quite significantly at those words, Emma’s lip still upturned, not only disgusted by what she might have to do, but also very, very wary of it. It was _NyQuil_ , for fuck’s sake. If she chugged the bottle, she’d probably end up passing out within the hour, and that might look a little bit suspicious.

Her foot began to rapidly bounce once more, anxiety overtaking her as she gripped the bottle tighter within her trembling hands. 

She couldn’t do this. 

But she kind of _had_ to do this, because if Regina… if she found out about—it just, it wasn’t an option. Out of everyone in the world, the last person Emma wanted to know about how truly fucked off she was, was her. She really didn’t know why – or maybe she really _did_ – but she was also pretty damn sure that she didn’t want to take a second and analyze it either. It just was what it was.

Emma took a deep breath, preparing herself for a new low, before suddenly her eyes fell on something on the corner of the sink and she shot up, the NyQuil completely forgotten and lying on the floor behind her. With one hand clasped around the square-shaped bottle, the other twisted off the cap in an instant before she put the plastic rim to her lips, set on devouring the last of its contents.

Mouthwash. She knew _that_ had a fair amount of alcohol in it – at least as much as cold medicine – and it wasn’t about to fuck her up in the serious way that NyQuil would have.

The Listerine burned its way down her throat and the intensity of the menthol flavor almost made her gag, but Emma kept going, knowing it was either this or medicine that would end up knocking her out cold. When she finished, Emma noticeably blanched, spitting into the sink before leaning over it with both hands, breathing heavily. 

God, she was disgusting.

Emma closed her eyes and stood there for a few long moments, allowing the liquid to do its job. It wasn’t as good as a nice shot or two of bourbon, but it would have to do for now. It took a little while, but finally Emma started to feel a bit better, and so she picked up her head and opened her eyes, being confronted by the image of herself in the small mirror over the sink.

Her hand twitched and Emma gripped the edge of the porcelain tighter, the urge to smash her reflection into a thousand pieces nearly consuming her whole. But that would cause attention she didn’t want, so Emma forced herself to pull away and head over towards the shower, the desperation to not feel dirty anymore coming to the forefront of her mind.

But even as she turned on the water and stepped in, Emma knew that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she scrubbed herself, she would never really be clean. She had fallen much too far, and there was no way in hell now that she would ever be able to claw her way back up.

[x]

“Regina…” Emma tried, feeling exasperated with the woman’s incessant dictation. She was cut off immediately, however.

“I’m sorry, did I give you the impression that this was a _discussion?_ ” Regina asked, quite rhetorically. “Because it is not. You’re a mess, Emma, and I won’t have you trekking halfway across the world looking for this man alone, especially considering that our son’s wellbeing is tied to you being successful in your endeavors. If I were to leave you to your own devices, in two weeks you would most likely be lying in a ditch somewhere. I’m not about to just let that happen.”

Emma gritted her teeth, aggravation seeping from her pores at Regina’s words. “I’m not fucking _incompetent._ ”

“No?” Regina challenged. “Because I’m fairly certain that little show you put on last night proved otherwise. Do you even _know_ where your car is? Because if you can tell me, I might actually consider your request for independence.”

_Damnit._

“At the bar,” Emma answered dismissively, as though Regina was the one who was stupid for not realizing that she would know that. However, the brunette wasn’t buying it and arched an eyebrow in her direction.

“ _Which_ bar?”

Emma exhaled a loud, aggravated sigh. “I don’t know, the one with the damn pool tables?” she furiously shot back, pissed off that she had proven Regina’s point. But fuck, she didn’t need a _babysitter._ “Look, it really doesn’t matter. You can’t just _keep_ me with you—”

“I can and I will,” Regina snapped. “I don’t trust you enough to allow you to be alone anymore, Emma. You’ve already demonstrated with glaring clarity that unless you have someone around to keep you from drinking yourself stupid, you will. And maybe I’m not as great of a motivation for you to stay relatively sober as Henry was, but regardless—”

“God, why do you even _care?_ ” Emma shouted, her frustration boiling over. “Are you that much of a masochist that you want to keep me around so we can screw each other up just a little bit more? Fucking hell, Regina! We can't be together twenty four seven; are you _high?_ ”

“I care because I _love_ you, you idiot!” Regina exclaimed fiercely, taking a step towards her. “You’re lucky I haven’t tied you to this damn bed and forced you to detox yet, because it _kills_ me to see what you’re doing to yourself. But I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt because maybe, with support, you might actually want to get better on your own. It’s why you slept with me last night, was it not?” Regina looked at her, the force of her gaze making Emma feel as though every wall she had ever built was being reduced to nothing but ash. “The drinking… it’s not working anymore for you. It’s not making anything better, is it?”

Emma furiously turned away from her, stalking towards the other side of the room to get some space from the woman before her. But even still, the small room did not provide her with much of an escape. “That’s none of your damn business,” Emma responded heatedly through clenched teeth. This was not a conversation that she wanted to have.

“Oh, really?” Regina questioned disbelievingly as she motioned towards her own body. “Because I believe I have at least fifteen different bruises that prove otherwise.”

“What the hell do you want me to say?!” Emma shouted, rounding on her once more. She felt trapped, suffocated by the weight of a conversation she would rather set herself on fire than actually have. “That I’m _sorry?_ Because I’m not. I _enjoyed_ hurting you, Regina, maybe even more than I enjoyed getting hurt myself. Because you and I? _We deserve it._ We fucking deserve each other.”

Regina stared at her, a fire brewing beneath her darkened eyes. Her lips pursed into a tight line for a moment, before she decided to hell with controlling herself, and brutally grabbed for Emma’s wrist.

“What the hell are you—?!”

But Emma’s words were lost to her as Regina viciously pulled her over towards the bathroom door, slammed it open with her foot, and pushed Emma inside, making her come face to face with herself in the mirror. “ _Look at yourself,_ ” Regina sneered, holding Emma’s arms to her side while simultaneously blocking the door, making sure she couldn’t escape that which she never wanted to face. “Is this the person you want to be for the rest of your life? The kind of _mother_ you want to be to Henry? I know more than anyone what it feels like to hate yourself, but you… you let it consume you. It’s eating you from the inside out, Emma, and you can’t continue doing this; it’s going to _kill_ you!”

“Maybe everyone would be better off,” Emma snapped, without even a thought to what she was really saying. She glared at Regina’s reflection in the mirror, and honestly, she shouldn’t have been surprised by what followed.

Suddenly her torso was slammed into the edge of the sink, knocking the breath from her lungs as everything that was once atop it went clattering to the floor. Jesus, they were like a walking advertisement for an abusive relationship, but in the end, it was the only way they knew how to communicate their emotions to each other. What Emma had said tore into Regina’s soul, and the woman grabbed a fistful of her hair, wrenching her face towards the mirror again to force Emma to look into it.

“If you die, _I_ die,” Regina told her, voice dangerously low as the emotion in it shredded Emma’s resolve to fucking pieces. The brunette was furious, yet so terribly frightened by the prospect. “Your _son_ dies, Emma. Maybe not physically, but neither of us would ever be able to walk through this world and feel like we’re really _living_ ever again. Are you so completely selfish that you would condemn us to that?”

Emma winced, the edge of the sink pressing into her abdomen painfully as Regina forced more of her weight against her, holding her in place. “You know,” she began, voice scratchy and distorted by the emotions she was trying to desperately suppress in favor of a subject change. “If you wanted to top me, Regina, we could have just done this in bed.”

Regina twisted her hand in the blonde’s hair violently before pulling her back so hard against her chest that it made Emma suck in a sharp breath. “This isn’t some damn _game,_ ” Regina hissed into her ear, sounding as though she were a second away from crying, yet trying to keep anger as her dominant emotion. “Do you even _care_ what you’re doing to those of us that love you?”

Emma clenched her jaw, trying to turn her head away from the reflection that seemed to be taunting her in the mirror, but Regina wouldn’t let her. “It’s not like I fucking get off on it or anything,” Emma snapped, furious that the woman had her in a position she actually couldn’t get out of. But then again, perhaps a part of her didn’t want to. She was so damn tired of running away from herself, running away from the world that she lived in, and the sorrow her actions had created had exhausted her to the point where she really felt like she didn’t care about anything anymore.

And she hated living that way.

Regina was going to say something, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Furrowing her eyebrows, Emma looked at the woman’s reflection in the mirror to see what the problem was, and when she did, her stomach dropped to the ground. Regina wasn’t looking at her anymore; she was looking at the scattered contents that used to lie on her sink.

In an instant Emma was released and practically pushed to the side as Regina bent down, grabbing the empty bottle of mouthwash that Emma had stupidly not thrown out. The blonde paled as Regina practically shoved it against her chest, forcing Emma’s back against the far wall. “What the _hell_ have you done?!”

“What are you talking about?” Emma stammered, although she knew she sounded as unconvincing as she was sure she looked. “Why the hell are you throwing _trash_ at me?”

“This was nearly _full!_ ” Regina practically shrieked at her, the tone of it making Emma noticeably wince. Regina grabbed the bottle back from her, only to basically whip it at Emma’s head. The blonde had to duck for it to only barely miss her. “How can you even stand to look at yourself when you’ve sunk this low? You couldn’t even wait a few fucking hours for a drink?! You—Jesus, you drank mouthwash, Emma! _Mouthwash!_ What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“I didn’t drink—!”

“Don’t _lie_ to me!” Regina shouted, pure fury in her eyes as she grabbed the nearest thing to her – a hairbrush – and pelted it towards the woman in front of her. Emma didn’t really have time to react to it, but Regina’s aim was off and she missed, the plastic colliding heavily with the wall.

Still, Emma instinctively ducked before scurrying as far away as she could get from the enraged woman before her. “For fuck’s sake, stop _throwing_ shit at me! I’m _sorry_ , okay?! I didn’t want to deal with talking to you sober, and you didn’t have anything else!”

“You…?” Regina tried, yet words failed her as she looked at Emma like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing in front of her. The look made Emma feel absolutely disgusted with herself and she turned away from her, unable to meet her gaze as her cheeks burned with shame. God, this was going from bad to worse and Emma couldn’t even get away from it. Regina was still blocking the door, and she was pretty sure that the brunette had absolutely no intention of moving any time soon.

A long silence enveloped the room, threatening to crush the sanity from Emma’s mind until Regina finally spoke two short, demanding words.

“You’re done.”

Emma blinked. “What?”

“You’re _finished!_ ” Regina shouted, the force of her voice nearly making Emma jump out of her skin. She looked crazed; her anger and upset molded into one uncontrollable emotion, and Regina looked as though if she had her powers on this side of the line, she would set the entire _bathroom_ on fire. “Look at what you’ve become, Emma! I’m not letting you do this to yourself; I can’t—I can’t fucking stand here and watch you kill yourself anymore! I tried—God, I _tried_ to just let you figure this out on your own, but after _that?_ I didn’t—I never thought you could be so bad off, and I will not—fuck, you’re just… you are _through_ with drinking, Emma; I don’t _care_ what it is that you want anymore! I _don’t!_ ”

Emma’s expression darkened, furious that Regina felt that she could just _dictate_ what she could or couldn’t do in her life. “You can’t just—!”

But Emma’s words died in her throat as she watched Regina transform from this furious being to this crumpled, lifeless form as her emotions got the better of her and tears of frustration, tears of sorrow, and tears of fear began to fall from her eyes. Choking back a sob, Regina covered her face with her hand as she slumped against the wall, looking as though she felt completely helpless and didn’t know what to do about it anymore. The sight of it shattered Emma into a million pieces as guilt overtook her, knowing that she was the sole reason for how broken the once fierce and powerful Queen now looked.

“Shit, Regina, don’t—you don’t need to _cry_ about it…” she tried, but it seemed her words only managed to enrage the woman who had now slumped to the ground against the wall, knees pulled tightly to her chest as an unintelligible sound fell from her lips. Emma didn’t know what it was this time, but whatever Regina had just grabbed got chucked heavily in her direction, and the blonde nearly fell into the bathtub as she tried to dodge it.

“Damnit, I said stop _throwing_ things at me!”

Regina’s eyes flashed, the look seeming incredibly dangerous despite being outlined by a tear-stained face, and something else came hurling in Emma’s direction.

“Ow, fuck!” Emma shouted, as this time the object had actually hit her. But Regina barely even noticed, she just grabbed something else, apparently intending to keep _throwing_ shit at her until she did what she said, and so Emma shouted, “Alright, _alright!_ ” as she held up her hands in surrender, backing away from her until she watched Regina drop whatever it was that she was holding. After it clanged against the hard flooring, Emma took in the object and winced; a curling iron. _That_ would have hurt.

“Regina… Regina, come on,” she tried, dropping to her knees before the other woman so she could get at her eyelevel. “Please stop crying.” She reached out for her, but Regina furiously slapped her hand away, shooting her a glare that threatened to vanquish her on the spot. 

“Don’t touch me.”

Emma’s fingers curled into her palm, hesitating for a moment before ultimately withdrawing. She didn’t want to upset her any more than she already had, as the sight of how _defeated_ Regina looked actually kind of frightened her.

Regina’s head was in her hand, the weight of it being supported by her elbow atop her knee, and her fingers were digging into her scalp like she was trying to claw out every single emotion she ever had, because she just couldn’t deal with it anymore. Regina had always been this fierce being; her sadness, her fear, her doubt, had always been channeled into an unwavering anger that could, according to the stories, bring entire kingdoms to their knees. Now though, her sorrow had cut too deep, her fear had grown too large, and for the first time since Emma had met her, Regina really looked like she didn’t know what to do anymore.

When the curse broke, Regina had fallen apart, desperate to fix what she had destroyed. But this, _this_ was all Emma’s doing, and it seemed Regina didn’t know how to go about putting the pieces back together when she wasn’t the one who had shattered it in the first place.

The look on the brunette’s face cut through her. Emma couldn’t just see how much Regina loved her, feared for her, but she _felt_ it as well; it crept into her veins like a sickness and ate her from the inside out, rotting her resolve and her pride as she realized, despite everything that had happened, despite how angry she was at Regina for everything that she had done, she did not want to be the cause of her distress. Not in this way, not like _this._

“You’re going to die,” Regina told her after a few long moments of silence. Her voice was hoarse, broken. Fingers twisting violently within dark tresses, she breathed out her sorrow. “If you keep doing this to yourself, you’re going to die. What you’re doing, what you _did…_ it’s not just the beginning anymore. You’re running out of time before you’ll realize that you can no longer turn around and find your way back again, and you know it.”

Emma felt her throat tighten as the truth in that consumed her, causing fresh tears to bristle behind her eyes. They went unnoticed though, Regina unable to even look at her as she stared at the far wall, eyes glassy and unfocused as she lay trapped inside her own fearful mind.

“It doesn’t matter,” Regina continued, her voice hollow, as though she was speaking more _at_ her rather than to her, “if you never want to be with me again. It doesn’t matter if we spend the rest of our lives on opposite sides of the world, or if you decide the only way you’ll ever be able to function is to punish me for the rest of your life. I don’t care what you want, where we go, what you decide to do with me or to me. Just don’t—don’t _die._ ”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood as her vision blurred and her body sank the rest of the way to the ground. Everything within her, all of it, had dissipated, leaving her feeling exhausted and useless as she practically fell into the woman beside her on the floor. 

“Don’t—that’s _fucked up,_ ” Emma breathed, unable to wrap her head around how sacrificial Regina sounded, just for the sake of _her._ She closed her eyes, unable to handle the harsh glare of the bathroom light atop the depressive air that had surrounded the room. Leaning her head on Regina’s shoulder, she told her softly, “It’s not your fault. Don’t—fuck, don’t _punish_ yourself like it is. We can’t just swap misery and hope that fixes everything. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Oh, I know,” Regina responded, her voice sounding like a faint echo as she instinctively cradled Emma’s head with her hand. It was protective, it was comforting, and Emma sunk into the feeling. “I know it’s not my fault, dear. I may have opened the door, but it was you who fell through it.” 

Her fingers curled in Emma’s hair, and the woman next to her moved closer, the self-hatred that resided within her begging for someone to eradicate it with love. And Regina, she _bursted_ with it. She loved Emma so much that she didn’t even know what to do with herself anymore, and yet she kept trying. Devastated, helpless, and falling apart herself, Regina kept trying, and Emma knew that she would until her voice gave out and the words stopped coming. She _loved_ her, and so it didn’t matter in that moment that Regina had destroyed what could have been a happy childhood, that she had killed a countless number of people under the banner of revenge, because right then, it was the only thing that Emma needed, and therefore, it was the only thing she felt.

And so she clung to it.

Burying her face in Regina’s neck, Emma blocked out the world as she practically clambered on top of her. It was probably infantile and terribly pathetic, but it made her feel protected, and, if there was one person in this entire world that would tear the very fabric of reality to keep her safe, it was Regina. The woman wrapped her arms around her, clinging to her just as tightly as Emma was to her, tucking the blonde’s head beneath her chin and hushing her softly as the Savior began to cry. Silently at first, and then louder as Emma realized, with a blinding clarity and a resonating sense of fear, that she didn’t want to do this anymore. 

She just didn’t know how to stop.

“Regina,” Emma breathed, the name sounding choked amidst her distress. She grasped for her, holding the fabric of her shirt tightly in her hands, as though she were afraid that if she finally stopped pretending that everything was okay, that Regina would leave her crying and alone atop the cheap linoleum flooring. “I don’t want to hate myself anymore…”

The admission was small, almost childlike.

Emma felt soft lips press against her forehead, and the faint drop of a tear landing on her skin. “Tell me what you need me to do, love,” Regina whispered, the words tracing patterns on her temple. “And I’ll do it without thought.”

“Because you love me…?”

It was such a small sounding, stupid little question given the circumstances, and yet for some reason, Emma needed to hear it be said. She had felt so terribly alone, so consumed with anger and hatred and fear that it suffocated her, and Regina, despite being the cause of so much of it, was still, at the end of the day, the only one who would ever be able to allow her to breathe again.

Emma could feel her smile against her skin, yet she knew it was born from sadness and from loss, more than the happiness they should have felt for finding their other half. “Until the stars burn out and the sky falls from above us,” Regina breathed, the intensity of the words sounding almost overly dramatic, if not for the fact that Emma knew with a blinding clarity that they were truer than anything else she had ever heard. “I will always love you, Emma Swan; until the end of my life and then some. That, my dear, is _my_ curse.”

Emma trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down hard enough to feel the sharp sting of pain and then the copper taste of blood. She choked back a sob, hating everything that their life had become. Where was their happily ever after? Why was it that everyone else seemed to get one, but not them? Emma had waited her whole life to feel connected to someone, to feel like she belonged somewhere, and yet there, in Regina’s embrace, she realized that where she belonged was just as miserable as where she did not.

Still, she was tired of it. She had fallen too far, drowned in so much, yet in the end, she was fearful of her own agony suffocating the life out of her. She didn’t want to be this person anymore.

And so, two little words, breaking beneath the weight they entailed, were uttered to the one person who would gladly drown in her place. “Help me.”

Regina inhaled a sharp breath, her fingers tightening in Emma’s hair protectively.

“Okay.”

**TBC…**


	15. Healing

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN  
Healing**

“If you take your eyes off of me for two seconds a bottle of liquor isn’t going to magically materialize in my hands, you know.”

Regina pursed her lips, a small look of annoyance crossing over her features. “I’m well aware of that, dear. However that doesn’t stop me from worrying about you. Are you sure you’re—?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Emma interrupted, a bit of a snap to her tone. Her leg was bouncing anxiously against the mattress, lightly shaking the laptop she was in front of. She slapped her hand on top of it to keep it from moving and Regina raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, that’s like the tenth time you’ve asked in the past hour. Relax, okay? I’m just… edgy. And if I start to feel sick you’ll be the first to know.”

“That was hardly the tenth.”

Emma rolled her eyes, trying to ignore her steadily growing headache. It had been getting worse and worse over the past hour, and it was soon going to get to the point where she could do nothing but lie in the dark. “It’s called an exaggeration, Regina. Look it up.” Regina’s annoyed look furthered at that, but Emma shut her down before she could say anything more. “Now stop interrupting me, I got work to do.”

Regina’s gaze flickered to the laptop in front of Emma, looking a little apprehensive. “Are you certain you’re going to be able to find him? This world is a very large place and he could have come into it anywhere.”

“Yeah, already know how bad the odds are stacked against me, thanks,” Emma muttered, her eyes scanning the screen in front of her as she wiped her clammy hands on her jeans. “But right now I’m going with the theory that if I got dumped off in Maine, maybe Baelfire did too. It’s a longshot and maybe I just watched too much _Angel_ when I was teenager with this ‘portal hot spots’ crap, but at least it’s a place to start.”

Regina watched her for a moment, taking notice of how her hands were beginning to tremble, and pursed her lips into a tight line.

“Don’t,” Emma said, without even looking over at her.

“What?”

“Don’t start. I’m _fine._ ”

For now, anyway. Looking for Baelfire at least distracted her enough so that she didn’t have to think about needing a drink, but her withdrawal symptoms had only just begun. If truth were told, Emma was actually worried about how bad they could get, but she didn’t want to make Regina fuss over her more than she already was, and so she kept her thoughts to herself. She could get through this. It would pass… eventually.

And she needed it to pass, because until then she was practically handcuffed to Regina’s side. The woman had brought her to retrieve her car and her baggage, but until Regina was certain she was okay, she wasn’t ‘allowed’ to be left alone; which meant that she could not have her own room in the motel, and that was… suffocating.

“You’re shaking.”

“And you’re distracting. _Stop._ Go read a book or something.”

Regina exhaled a hard breath, Emma’s unwillingness to just allow her to worry or _care_ testing her patience. “Emma, this is serious. I had assumed your addiction was merely in your mind, but you’re starting to exhibit symptoms of someone who was physically dependent on it. And if that’s the case, withdrawing from it could become dangerous. Perhaps I should just bring you to the hospi—”

“No!” Emma exclaimed, the force of her tone nearly startling the woman next to her. “No hospitals. I’ll be fine, okay? Seriously.” 

“You can’t possibly know that.”

“Regina, can you just—!” Emma started, fingers tensing as she gestured erratically at the brunette, letting her hands to do the talking for her. Frustration was beginning to curl off her like smoke, and if Regina didn’t just _quit,_ she was gonna end up going against one pissed off Savior. Taking a breath, Emma looked at her warningly as she held out the flat of her hand. “Look, I get that in a few months I’ll probably be thanking you for this, but right now? This really fucking sucks. And you? You’re. Not. _Helping._ I’m trying to distract myself here, and all you’re doing is bringing up the one thing I don’t wanna think about. Stop.”

Regina chewed on the inside of her cheek, obviously not wishing to drop the subject but not wanting to make this any harder than it had to be for the woman opposite her. “Fine,” she conceded quietly. “But if you start to exhibit any of the more severe symptoms, I will take you there kicking and screaming if I have to.”

“What, like death?” Emma deadpanned, to which Regina shot her a furious look for. That apparently was _not_ something to joke about.

“Fever,” she began listing off, ticking off each point with another finger. “Hallucinations. Convulsions.” 

“Pretty sure it ain’t gonna be that bad,” Emma dismissed, because in the end, that sounded like something that happened to _other_ people, not to her.

But then again, she had thought alcoholism was too.

[x]

Emma got progressively worse the longer the day wore on.

There weren’t many things that frightened Regina, but this was easily one of them. It was completely beyond her control, and as she held back Emma’s hair as she pitched over the side of the bed, vomiting nothing but stomach acid into the waste bin, Regina swallowed hard, trying not to outwardly show how frightened this was making her. Emma was already going through enough, and it would only stand to make everything worse.

Emma choked on her bile, spitting the remnants of it into the bin as Regina ran her other hand down the length of her back, trying to sooth her. Emma hadn’t eaten all day, claiming she just wasn’t hungry, and now Regina could only imagine how badly the acid was burning her esophagus. She should have pushed harder to have her eat something; even bland crackers would have been better than nothing.

“Fuck,” Emma groaned, her voice scratchy and weak sounding. “I missed the bin a little.”

“It’s fine,” Regina assured her softly, tracing small patterns on Emma’s lower back in an attempt to give her some small semblance of comfort. She had no idea if it was actually helping or not, but it was instinctual nonetheless. “I’ll clean it up when you’re through.” 

“No, that’s—” But a loud cough cut her off before she wretched again, putting her head into the waste bin. Regina winced as she heard her continue to dry heave, as nothing else was left for her to throw up. The sound of it was sickening.

“It would hardly be the first mess I’ve cleaned, dear,” Regina told her gently, not wanting Emma to have to clean up after herself when she was ill. “I took care of Henry for ten years, after all. He had been sick plenty of times over the course of his childhood.”

Emma coughed and then groaned, moving away from the waste basket to lie back down on the bed. She was awfully pale and Regina’s lips pursed into a tight line at the sight of her. Slick with sweat, Emma’s blonde hair stuck to her skin and Regina pushed it back out of her eyes before running her hand down the contour of her cheek. Emma’s eyes fluttered closed as she leaned into the touch, searching for the only sense of comfort that this moment could allot her.

“Feel bad ‘bout it,” she mumbled. “My fault.”

“There will be time for guilt later,” Regina reminded her softly. “But for now, just try to get some rest.”

Emma nodded and Regina carefully removed herself from the woman’s side. As Emma rolled over, Regina got a washcloth out of the bathroom and tended to the mess she had made. After she had finished and washed her hands, she sat back down on the bed beside her, trying to ready herself for a sleepless night, as there was no way she would be able to get any rest with the condition that Emma was in. The blonde moved instinctively, crawling towards her until she could place her head in Regina’s lap. The sorceress smiled lightly, beginning to run her fingers through the other woman’s hair. It was tangled and unmanageable, yet Regina found she didn’t much care.

So much had happened between them, and Regina was unsure if them sleeping together had really changed anything, but in the end, it was still nice to be needed; to be _trusted_ to take care of the woman she loved. And so she did.

“Regina,” Emma breathed, the whiny words tickling the skin of Regina’s bare thigh. “This sucks.”

Regina smirked a little, finding herself amused at how childlike Emma sounded. It was endearing, in a way. It reminded her of Henry. “I would remind you that your actions have consequences, but I believe this situation is doing that for you.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

“It’ll get better,” Regina promised her, although she knew she couldn’t do such a thing. Even if Emma got past this, she still had an uphill battle, and she may for the rest of her life. Alcoholism was not an easy addiction to have, as it was legal and easily accessible. Still, she lied, “This is the hard part, remember that. And I’m… I’m proud of you, Emma, for having the strength to do this.”

“You have no idea how bad I want to literally soak my entire fucking liver in whiskey right now,” Emma groaned, burying her head further into Regina’s nightshirt as she sought to block out the rest of the world. “So save your pride till I actually survive this crap.”

Regina tightened her fingers in Emma’s hair, lightly scratching her nails over her scalp, and exhaled a soft sigh. She said nothing however, as she knew this was incredibly hard on Emma, and it was understandable that she would be bitter about the decision she had made. At the moment, it probably didn’t feel like the right one.

They sat in silence for a long time before Emma asked softly, “Distract me?”

“Hm?”

“You know, just… talk, or something,” Emma requested, digging her fingers into the fabric of the comforter as she stared at the far wall. “Tell me… I don’t know, something happy from your childhood. Cause fuck, the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I don’t know anything about your life before Storybrooke; at least, y’know, nothing outside of the stuff that was in Henry’s book. And I…” Emma faltered for a moment, realizing her mistake of bringing that topic up once the brunette instinctively stiffened.

“That book is an incredibly biased account of complicated circumstances,” Regina quickly defended, stilling her hand in Emma’s hair. “You would do well to not use it as a gospel. If you wish to know my side of things, I would prefer it if you _asked._ ”

“No, I…” Emma tried, but looked a little overwhelmed with how quickly Regina’s entire demeanor changed at just the mere mention of it. She sighed for a moment, pushing the hair back out of her face before burying her head further in Regina’s thigh, unable to look at her. “I don’t… wanna know that stuff, okay?” she mumbled, “Not yet, and especially not when I’m already fighting the urge to puke. So just… happy things, Regina, yeah? Tell me about your childhood.”

Regina took a deep breath, not really finding this topic much better. Still, she spoke, as in the end, she didn’t want Emma focused on what she was currently going through. “There weren’t many happy moments from my childhood,” she told her softly, honestly. “Unless you count the time I spent with my horse, Rocinante. Taking care of him, riding him… it was the only time I ever felt truly content.”

“Seriously?” Emma asked, turning her head to look up at her. Her face was so pale that it almost glowed under the soft moonlight that shone through the window. Regina tried like hell not to focus on how she looked though, as it made her stomach feel unsettled. She didn’t like seeing her like this; it tore her apart inside.

“I mean, I know your mom was a complete cunt but like… what about your dad?” Emma asked. “Didn’t you have any friends? Or like… I don’t know, what about your first crush or whatever?” She was pushing, but she clearly wished for Regina to keep speaking, not be shut down like the brunette’s answer had originally intended. Emma wanted her distraction. “I mean come on, Regina, it couldn’t have _all_ been shit. As someone who had a crap childhood too, I know it still has its moments, no matter how small.”

Regina exhaled a long breath, turning her head to look out the far window. This wasn’t exactly the easiest of conversations, which was why Regina never felt compelled to have it. Perhaps Emma should have known about these things a long time ago, but it wasn’t something Regina ever wished to voice. “My father was a kind man,” she began softly, conceding to her wishes. “However, he was unable to stand up to my mother, and so that kindness was wasted when I needed it the most.”

Emma stayed silent, waiting for her to continue. Regina took a moment, gathering up her courage to allow herself to become a little more exposed. Despite the fact that she trusted Emma beyond anyone else on this earth, it was still hard to talk about. Her childhood was where her weakness lied.

“I wasn’t allowed to have friends,” Regina went on after a few second’s hesitation. “Mother found them to be a needless distraction. I hardly socialized with anyone my own age, and when I did, Mother believed them or their family’s status to generally be unworthy of my attentions and forbade me from seeing them again. The only person I…”

But Regina stopped, unable to speak about the one thing Emma should probably really know about her, yet she feared having her be aware of all the same.

“The only person, what, Regina?” Emma asked tentatively. She knew they had stumbled upon a topic of great unrest for her, as Regina’s face was briefly etched with the pain of the past. God, she couldn’t do this right now. This wasn’t the right time.

Would there ever really be a right time though?

Regina hesitated again, pursing her lips into a tight line. Finally she shook her head before tearing her gaze away from the window. “This isn’t a conversation you want to have now,” she warned her, trying not to notice the way her voice broke beneath the weight of the words. “It does not have a happy ending, and I don’t believe you’re ready to know the true extent of it.”

“Okay,” Emma conceded softly, accepting that. She wet her cracked, dry lips for a moment though before inquiring, “But can I… ask you something?” Regina looked down at her, yet did not say no, so Emma took that as a sign to continue. “This… person. You loved them, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Regina admitted quietly, once more unable to look at the woman lying atop her. It felt strange, to say that to the person she was currently in love with. “I loved him very much.”

Emma was silent for a moment, and Regina could only imagine that she was turning the information over in her head. She traced light patterns on the back of Regina’s leg before plucking up the courage to ask, “Can I know his name?” Before Regina could shut her down though, she quickly continued, “If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”

“The name of your first love?” Regina inquired, to which Emma nodded. Finding that to at least be a fair compromise, Regina conceded with, “Alright, but that’s the end of the questions about him. One day I promise I will tell you but… but that day is not today.”

Emma nodded her consent, and then Regina quietly revealed the name of the man whose death began the tragic path she had found herself on. “Daniel.”

Emma smiled softly at her, a way of thank you, before revealing her own. “Neal.”

Regina’s eyebrows furrowed, recognizing that name. It was on her son’s original birth certificate. But surely it couldn’t be… “Henry’s father?”

“Mmm.”

Regina was surprised. “Oh. I had… well, I suppose I had just expected—”

“What? That Henry was conceived in the back of a car by some one night stand?” Emma finished for her, making Regina flush lightly from her tone. With Emma’s past, it was hardly an uneducated guess, but still, she felt ashamed for having immediately jumped to the conclusion. “No. Henry was conceived out of love. Or… I don’t know, what I _thought_ was love at the time. Turns out I was wrong though. He was the reason I went to prison in the first place; the bastard set me up. It’s…” Emma sighed, turning her face away from her as she exhaled a long breath. “Nevermind. I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

Regina gave her a soft, sympathetic smile before running her fingers through the other woman’s hair once more. Apparently she was not the only one who had experienced pain with her first love, and she very much understood the desire to not speak on the subject. And if Emma could allot her that privacy, at least for the moment, then she could do the same. 

“Alright, well,” Emma began after another long moment’s silence. “How about the first time you were with a woman? I mean, obviously I wasn’t your first; no one’s _that_ good their first time.” Despite the previously depressive air that hung in the room, Regina smirked at her words. But then Emma’s face clouded as she realized something. “Unless _that_ ended up being shit too. Cause I gotta say, for asking for happy stories, I’m not getting many of them.”

Regina chuckled quietly. “The end of any relationship isn’t generally filled with a sense of happiness, Emma, but my first with a woman didn’t finish particularly horribly either. But then again, she was more hurt than I by its end, so I suppose that may be a contributing factor to my overall view on it.”

“So tell me,” Emma implored, looking up at her once more. But then she squished her face to the side for a moment before amending, “Just do me a favor and convince me that she was ugly as hell while you do it though. Cause… you know.”

Regina laughed softly at Emma’s blatant jealously. As she seemed (and proven, on more than one occasion) to be a jealous person herself, Regina found it comforting to know that at least she was not alone. Possessiveness was in their nature. “Her name was Maleficent,” she began, “And yes, she was _terribly_ hideous. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Emma smirked, knowing she was lying, yet appreciating it all the same. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, dear.”

Emma moved to lie flat on her back, stretching her feet out so they dangled over the edge of the bed. She looked straight upwards, her gaze catching Regina’s. “Okay, so… how long did it last and why did it end?”

“I hope you know that I expect you to share your first time with a woman as well, after all of this,” Regina reminded her, to which Emma just waved off with a ‘yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Regina rolled her eyes slightly at her flippant attitude, yet continued her story.

“It was never really a relationship,” she told her. “More… what is the term that’s used here for friends who sleep with one another?”

“Friends with benefits.”

“Yes, except I never really considered her to be much of a friend,” Regina admitted. “Of course I would refer to her as such when in her company, but she was more… a powerful ally that I wished not to lose. And so when she showed interest in other things that I could offer her, I obliged. I found she was more susceptible to giving me what I wanted then.”

“So, what… you slept with her for power?” Emma asked, looking at her as though that concept was strange. “Not even for pleasure?”

“Having power was where I _found_ my pleasure, dear,” Regina told her gently, knowing this was something Emma had never really been exposed to. “My mother… she taught me at a very young age that sex was nothing but a bargaining tool. We slept with who we must to get ahead in life; outside of that, it was a fairly useless act.”

Emma curled her lip up in disgust. “You know that’s seriously fucked up, right? Especially for your _mom_ to tell you that shit.”

“That was the way of things where I came from,” Regina reminded her, “at least within the royal families. Still, it seemed Maleficent had forgotten that, and she allowed her feelings for me to override her good sense. And when she realized that it meant more to her than it did to me, she grew very angry.”

“Well, yeah,” Emma responded, curling her arms into herself as she shivered slightly. “You were using her. Think most people would be pissed about that.”

“Well, at the time,” Regina began, chewing slightly on her bottom lip at the judgmental tone in Emma’s voice. “It was all I knew. After everything that had happened in my life, everything that I had gone through, I believed it was what I should do. It was the only thing that made sense at the time, and the only way to get what it was that I wanted. Now however, looking back on it, I do regret it. I cared for her; perhaps not as much as she cared for me, but enough to feel badly for breaking her heart. She didn’t deserve that. But then again…” 

Regina trailed off slightly, averting her gaze from Emma as she admitted softly, thinking of Leopold and the things she was forced to do for him under the banner of ‘marriage’. “I believe we all are forced to go through things we do not deserve, at least once in our life. It is just the way of the world, or so I had always been led to believe.”

Emma looked up at her, wrapping her arms around her form. Concern shone beneath her eyes as she read between the lines. “Someone used you once?”

“Mm,” Regina confirmed softly, still unable to look down at Emma’s prying gaze. She shook her head, forcing herself to smile, even though she knew Emma could see right through it. “But that is a conversation for another day.”

Emma pursed her lips, but accepted the fact that Regina didn’t wish to talk about it with a nod. Her hands ran up and down her arms very quickly, yet briefly, as another shiver wracked her body. This time, it drew Regina’s attention. “Are you alright?”

“Fine. Just… tired, or whatever.”

The answer was quick and dismissive, and sounded nothing at all like the truth.

“You were shivering.”

Emma moved out of Regina’s lap then, as though she were trying to purposely get away from this conversation’s end, which only stood to further Regina’s rapidly growing paranoia. “Yeah, well… window’s open. It’s a little cold.”

“It’s nearly summer.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t be chilly. Jesus, Regina, what’s with the third degr— _hey!_ ”

Emma’s sentence was cut off by Regina grabbing her wrist, stilling her from moving any further away as she slapped her hand to the blonde’s forehead. Her breathing shallowed; Emma was burning up. “How long have you felt like this?!” Regina demanded, nearly scrambling off the bed in her haste to get a thermometer. She needed to know how bad it was.

“I don’t know, a half hour?” Emma responded, trying to make her voice sound light to brush it off as nothing. But her voice sounded hoarse, her face was already deathly pale, and honestly, there was nothing she could do to make Regina believe that this wasn’t as bad as she thought. “Come on Regina, just leave it, I’m just… I’m tired okay? I need to get some sleep, that’s all. It’ll pass. I mean the nausea passed, right?”

“Yes, to make way for a _fever,_ ” Regina snapped after grabbing what she needed out of the bathroom. “And once this passes, what will be next? _Convulsions?_ ”

“Oh come on, it’s just a little— _mphh!_ ” 

Emma’s words were cut off by Regina practically shoving the thermometer in her mouth, and the blonde glared at her fiercely. She opened her mouth to speak, but Regina grabbed her chin in her hand and warned her, “If you don’t allow me to take your temperature, _so help me._ ”

Emma didn’t seem too pleased by that, yet sunk back into the pillows, the glare remaining etched on her features, and said nothing.

After a moment it beeped and Regina took it from Emma without even allowing the woman to look at it herself. She knew if it was bad she would clear it and lie. Once she took a look at the numbers, her stomach dropped. “A hundred and two point five,” she told her, feeling herself beginning to panic. She threw the thermometer on the bedside table and got to her feet, informing her, “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No!” Emma exclaimed, sitting upright in bed so fast that the movement seemed to make her either dizzy or nauseous. Perhaps both. She groaned, taking a moment to gather her bearings before telling her, “I’m not going to the hospital, Regina. I’m just… I’m _not._ ”

“You don’t have a choice!” responded Regina fiercely. “I told you that if it got any worse that I would—!”

“They’ll lock me up!” Emma shouted, her face masking into one of pure panic. The last bit of color drained from her face at the thought, and she looked like she was going to be violently ill. “They’ll… Regina, fuck, they’ll throw me in some room and lock the door, and after that they’ll… I don’t know, put me into a treatment center or something and fucking throw away the key. Don’t you _get it?_ I can’t just go in like this and then walk out of there, _they won’t let me!_ ”

Emma was beginning to breathe heavily, her eyes wild and frightened, and Regina instinctively sat down on the bed and began to hush her, attempting to allot Emma some semblance of calm. She didn’t realize how badly Emma would react to the thought of being contained, but then again, perhaps she should have expected it; the woman had spent a fair amount of time in prison, after all, and she doubted that it was a good experience for her. Actually, after this, Regina was _certain_ that it was not.

“Emma, Emma… breathe, okay?” Regina tried, running her hands soothingly along her arms. “Just breathe.”

Emma shook her head wildly, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. Regina worried that she had thrust her into a memory she did not want to remember, and her heart ached with guilt. Emma crumbled before her, falling to her arms as she buried her head in the crook of the brunette’s neck. “Don’t make me,” she begged her through her tears. “Please, Regina, don’t make me. I swear I’ll never touch another drop of liquor in my life if you just— fuck, please, just take _care_ of me. You’re the only one that I…!” But Emma’s last words were lost to her, dissolving into sobs.

“Okay,” Regina conceded in a whisper, despite the fact that the answer was going against everything that she knew was smart. But Emma was breaking before her, frightened by the prospect of being locked away again, and the last thing Regina wanted to do was upset her even more, as it would only stand to make things worse. “Okay. It’s okay, shh…”

Wrapping her arms around Emma’s shivering form, Regina kissed her on the forehead and told her softly, “I’ll try, alright? I promise you that I’ll try.”

[x]

Regina had silent tears running down her cheeks as she held Emma during her fitful slumber, pressing a cool cloth to the woman’s cheek and forehead every now and again. She was trying to at least make Emma somewhat comfortable, as being wrapped tightly in blankets was not furthering that in the slightest. But Regina needed her to try to sweat out her fever, and this was the only way she could think to do so. Still, though Emma’s temperature hadn’t risen anymore, it hadn’t yet dropped either.

And that frightened her.

_Fever. Hallucinations. Convulsions. Death._

The words kept replaying over and over in her mind, and it took everything that Regina had in her to not dial nine-one-one on her cell phone. Still, her watery eyes kept glancing over to it now and again, wondering when the inevitable moment would come when Regina finally put Emma’s safety over her comfort. If Henry had been sick like this, she wouldn’t have cared how frightened he was of the hospital, as his health mattered more. And to her, Emma’s health still outranked, but a small part of Regina feared upsetting her further, as she felt as though she had done nothing but that ever since the curse broke.

They had made progress since then. Perhaps it wasn’t great progress, but Emma no longer looked at her as though the sight of her made her physically ill. In all honesty, Regina wasn’t really sure _where_ they were in regards to their relationship, as it seemed they had been all over the map lately, but she knew one thing was for certain, and that was that they were at least in a better place than they were the day that their love became their undoing.

Perhaps it was selfish, perhaps it was so utterly foolish, to fear taking three steps back when they finally managed to take one forward, but it was the sole reason that she had yet to call an ambulance. Emma would never forgive her if she found herself contained, despite the fact that it may save her life.

So Regina brushed the fallen tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, pressed the cool cloth to Emma’s burning skin, and prayed that she would get better on her own. And if she did not, then Regina knew what she had to do, despite how betrayed Emma might feel because of her decision.

A low, pained moan filled the silence of the room as the blonde stirred in Regina’s arms, trembling slightly as another chill ran through her body. She did not awaken though, and Regina found herself glad for it, as she didn’t want Emma to witness how badly she was falling apart during all of this. She needed to be strong for her, to be the one who reassures her that everything will be fine. The more frightened she got, the more it would rub off on Emma.

But the woman was asleep now, so Regina allowed her emotions to consume her as another tear slipped down her cheek. “Please get better,” she murmured, “Please, please get better. You’re scaring me to death.”

This wasn’t fair. Emma was the strongest person Regina had ever known, and to see her so pale, so frail, frightened her beyond measure. Emma Swan had always been this fierce force of nature, barreling through the world with such ferocity and strength. And yet there she lay, curled up into Regina’s arms, and in that moment she looked so terribly small and fragile. It made Regina choke on a sob as she tried to suppress its volume, afraid of waking the slumbering woman with her sorrow.

This was her fault.

Regina had tried not to blame herself for this, as she only created the circumstances that led to Emma being unable to face the world; it was the woman in her arms that did not choose a healthier coping mechanism, and yet still it tore Regina apart inside to know that none of this would have come about if not for the choices she had made, and the lies that she had relentlessly told.

Regina found Emma’s hand beneath the weight of the comforter, tangled their fingers together, and held on tight. She never wanted to let her go.

She wanted to protect her, heal her, _save_ her. Regina felt so completely helpless that the feeling rose up inside of her with such ferocity, and she cursed every God she knew that she was unable to do so. It wasn’t fair. _It wasn’t fair._ Emma didn’t deserve this pain, this suffering, and Regina wanted more than anything else to give up every future moment of her own happiness, just so Emma could never again feel so helpless, so utterly lost and broken.

Regina loved Emma with everything in her heart and then some, so much that sometimes it felt as though she couldn’t contain it. Like now. It felt as though it was pushing outward, desperately reaching for the woman that created its existence in the first place; finding its home. And then it was touching her, it was filling her, it was—

Regina audibly gasped as Emma awoke with a start, her hand squeezing Regina’s tightly as the feeling barreled heavily into the blonde’s body, consuming her, completing her. And then Regina realized, with wide eyes and gasping breathes, that it wasn’t love at all.

It was _magic._

“Regina,” Emma gasped, her skin beginning to glow with a soft golden hue. But Regina couldn’t answer her; her breath had caught in her throat, her eyes widening with disbelief as she suddenly recognized what was happening. She was _healing_ her.

But that was impossible. Magic didn’t exist outside of Storybrooke, and even if it did, Regina’s magic was born from something far too dark to achieve this kind of thing. Never, not once in Regina’s entire life, had she ever been able to heal either herself or another. That required a kind of purity that did not reside within the magic coursing through her veins.

And yet, it was happening.

It only took moments, but it felt like a lifetime of them staring into each other’s eyes with disbelief and wonderment. And then it was gone, the magic dissipating after its task had been accomplished. Both women were breathing heavily, still staring at one another, until quite suddenly Emma untangled their linked hands, threw off her covers, and practically scrambled away from her.

“How…?” she asked, eyeing Regina as though she was unsure if she should be thankful or mistrustful. The color was back in her cheeks again, and she looked as healthy as ever, despite the red, tiredness of her eyes. It was the most beautiful sight Regina thought she had ever seen and she laughed, relief washing through her so suddenly that the happiness seemed to make her a little delirious.

Emma’s brow crinkled at the reaction, and Regina wished she could stop laughing, but she just couldn’t. It was insane, it was impossible, but it was _wonderful._

“I don’t know,” Regina told her once her laughter had mostly subsided. A wide smile was still etched onto her face though and she shook her head, pushing the hair back from her eyes and she chuckled once more. “And God, I don’t even _care._ ”

Because in the end, it didn’t even matter why it happened; Regina was just so very happy that it did.

**TBC…**


	16. Conduit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, no one yell or anything, but I’m gonna have to push back the next chapter of this to two weeks instead of one. Turns out trying to juggle two stories and SWTOR made me fall kind of behind, lol. Sorry. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a little bit ahead this way.

**CHAPTER SIXTEEN  
Conduit**

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

Emma was wringing her hands together, pacing back and forth in front of the bed so rapidly that she was sure she was making Regina dizzy. But she didn’t care, because suddenly it felt like the entire world had been turned upside down on her _again,_ and Emma wasn’t quite sure how to handle that. 

“I’m aware of that, dear. And yet still it happened.”

“No, but—!” Emma began, rounding on Regina for a moment as she started gesturing erratically at her. She didn’t know what she was trying to say, as fifteen things came to her mind at once. Finally, she decided to go with, “This isn’t the way the world _works,_ Regina! It’s fucked enough that there’s magic in Storybrooke, but now you can do it _here_ too? That shouldn’t be possible, because if it—if it _was_ , then wouldn’t the normal world know about it? I mean, if it exists here then you can’t be the only one doing it, right?”

“Emma, you need to relax,” Regina tried, watching the woman before her fidget some more. “You’re panicking, and I don’t think it’s completely warranted. It isn’t as though the world is going to implode for it.”

“How would you know?” Emma shot back. “For all we know we could have created some kind of… I don’t know, a damn _paradox_ or something by doing something that we shouldn’t, and—!”

Regina rolled her eyes at that, interrupting, “You watch far too much television.”

“That’s not the point!”

Regina pursed her lips into a firm line, her exhaustion apparent by the hollowness of her eyes. She probably hadn’t slept all night, worrying about _her_ , and there Emma was, probably making everything worse when Regina had finally believed it was better. Still, Emma didn’t like things she didn’t understand, as the unknown had always frightened her.

After a long stretch of silence, Regina finally admitted, “I didn’t heal you, Emma. Not… not exactly, anyway.”

“What?” Emma asked, confusion flickering across her features. “What do you mean? Of course you did, I was _there._ ” And hello, the state of her body was proof of that. Not only was she not sick anymore, but the spell even healed the bruises that had formed on her body because of their rough night together. She looked and felt as good as new.

“No, I didn’t,” Regina told her softly, looking slightly apprehensive about what that could mean. “I believe I only acted as some sort of conduit, because that magic, it… it didn’t come from me.” Off of Emma’s perplexed look, Regina explained, “I am… unable to do light magic of that magnitude; it isn’t what resides within me, so it’s impossible that I was where it originally came from.” 

Emma stared at her for a moment, trying to process that information. It took quicker than she would have liked to come to a viable conclusion, but it was so completely _ridiculous_ that it made her scoff in disbelief. “You’ve gotta be joking,” she responded. “I can’t do magic, Regina.”

“No,” Regina agreed, which then made Emma’s eyebrows knit, as she was sure that was what she had been implying. But Regina had already seemed to come to a conclusion that Emma couldn’t even begin to fathom, and so she waited for her explanation. “You can’t. However, in case you have forgotten, dear, you are quite literally _made_ from magic; the strongest type to ever exist in this or any other realm.”

“The product of True Love,” Emma finished for her softly, realizing what it was that Regina meant. Still, it sounded ridiculous. If she had magic within her, wouldn’t she be able to _do_ it? Shouldn’t she… shouldn’t she have _known_ way before this? “No,” Emma told her firmly, shaking her head. “That doesn’t even make sense, Regina. I’m not—”

“Doesn’t it?” Regina countered, looking at her as though she was trying to dissect her, find what makes her tick inside. It felt incredibly invasive and Emma scowled at her to get her to quit doing it. She wasn’t some kind of damn _science project,_ she was a human fucking being. A _normal_ one, thank you.

Regardless of the fact that she had apparently been born in some kind of fairytale world.

“Emma,” Regina continued, resting her weight on her arms as she pushed herself to a more upwards position. “I promise you, the magic didn’t come from me. It felt… different; lighter, more innocent, I suppose. My magic… it isn’t strong enough to exist outside the town line. It’s been lying dormant. I know it’s _there,_ but I can’t reach it. Yours though… True Love, that is the most powerful thing of all. It is the only possible solution, as something like that is the only thing strong enough to exist outside of the town line. I was merely able to draw the magic from you because I am able to wield it, but I didn’t create it.”

“So what are you saying?” Emma snapped impatiently, feeling scared all over again for reasons she couldn’t quite describe. “That if I put my mind to it I could move objects and fucking, I don’t know— _teleport_ or some shit?”

“No,” Regina responded, shaking her head. “You may have magic within you, but you’re not trained to use it. Magic is more than just _putting your mind to it;_ it’s far more complicated, and without being properly taught, I doubt you could even levitate so much as a feather.”

Emma felt herself release a breath of air she didn’t know she had been holding. Maybe it was because magic had screwed up so much of her life, but she really didn’t want any part of it. She had been through enough already in the last few weeks, and the last thing she wanted to do was incorporate something else that could make everything so much harder on her. She had had enough of that to last her a lifetime. Emma just… she wanted to be _normal._

“You seem to be, however, some sort of magical battery,” Regina told her, eyes raking over Emma’s form as she assessed her. “For lack of a better term. And that will be terribly dangerous for you, should anyone in Storybrooke find out. Those that are power hungry could cross the boundary without fear, for if they found you and utilized the power that resides in you, they could regain what my curse has taken from them.”

“But there’s already magic in Storybrooke,” Emma countered, yet was shut down immediately.

“It’s unstable,” Regina reminded her, “Unpredictable. With the curse not breaking correctly, no one can access it in the way that we once were able. I was only able to control it twice, and…” But she trailed off, a look of realization passing over her face as she whispered, “Oh my god.”

“What?” Emma asked, another sense of panic rising within her, thinking the worst. “Regina, _what?_ ”

“It was _you,_ ” Regina breathed, looking at Emma as though she was seeing her for the first time. “How did I not notice before? Each time I was able to control my magic, I was touching _you._ ”

“I thought that was your magic!” Emma protested, looking completely lost. After all, Regina seemed to know immediately that this time it wasn’t her magic that healed her. Wouldn’t she have said something before this?

“No, no,” Regina responded, waving her off as she stood, beginning to pace as she allowed the pieces to fall together in her mind. “It _was,_ but you… if you can act as some sort of conduit in a world without magic, it would only stand to reason that what lies within you is stronger than a broken, defective curse. I must have channeled it through you subconsciously, and that was what made me able to control it.”

While that did make sense, Regina seemed to be missing a very large problem that stemmed from that information. Emma, however, did not, and she noticeably paled. “Regina,” she whispered, her voice tight and low. “If… if magic can only be controlled there through me, then how is Gold going to lift the boundary and get us back?”

Regina stopped mid stride, her eyes widening in fear as the breath was pushed from her lungs. She fell against the wall, her back hitting the peach coloring with a soft thud. “Oh God,” she breathed, realizing they might not have a way back after all. “Henry…”

“Maybe…” Emma tried, pushing the hair back from her eyes as she tried to force herself not to fall apart just yet. There had to be other options. “Maybe he could just _leave_ and we could pick him up at the boundary? I mean, there’s nothing stopping anyone from leaving Storybrooke, just returning.”

“Storybrooke is invisible to this world,” Regina told her softly, looking absolutely horrified by where they had ended up. “I wouldn’t even know where the boundary begins, nor how the magic works that protects it. The entrances could move daily, or the location of the town could periodically change. We could be leaving him in the middle of the woods to fend for himself, and we _can’t_ —”

Regina’s voice broke, and it made Emma’s heart lurch in her chest. She came to her, offering her comfort as it seemed like the only plausible thing to do. Despite everything, she still owed Regina. Emma wasn’t stupid; she knew her withdrawal symptoms were frighteningly bad and had the possibility of getting even worse. And if that happened, Regina would have had to either break her promise to her and bring her to the hospital, or possibly watch her die right there on that bed. So of course Emma was thankful to be healed, even if it was purely physical. Her addiction would probably always exist inside of her, but for now, at least things hadn’t gotten worse. 

Regina helped her. She saved her, and Emma wasn’t just about to forget that.

Besides, their love for Henry was something they shared, and even without True Love being in the mix, it was what connected them. He was their son, and they needed to find a way to be with him again, no matter the cost. They would find a way, because they _had_ to.

“It’ll be alright,” Emma softly tried, gathering the other woman up in her arms. Regina was shaking, the realization that they might not have a way back seeming to cripple her. But Emma just held on to her tightly, weaving her fingers in chocolate locks as she buried the other woman’s face in the crook of her neck. Regina’s breathing was uneven against her skin, her fear being poured out with each exhale. “We’ll figure it out, okay? We have to. I mean… I have all this magic inside me, right? The strongest magic ever apparently, so maybe it… maybe we can find a way past the boundary ourselves. We’ll get him, Regina, I promise.”

Regina nodded mutely against her shoulder and Emma exhaled, feeling terribly guilty. This was her fault. She was the one who had opted not to bring Henry along, and what she thought would be a good decision at the time had turned out to potentially be one of the most horrible ones she had ever made, should they never actually be able to get back to their son again. 

And that… Emma wouldn’t be able to live with that, so they _had_ to find a way. There was no other option.

[x]

“You’re with _Regina?!"_

Regina felt her nostrils flare as she glared at the image of Snow’s appalled expression on Emma’s computer. The woman had barged into Henry’s room without so much as a knock to inform him it was dinner time, only to bear witness to the boy speaking to _both_ of his mother’s via webcam. This clearly displeased her, and while Regina did take satisfaction in that fact, she still wished to be able to speak to her son in _private._

Emma groaned at the unexpected visitor, her head falling into her hand as she mumbled, “Shit.”

“ _Emma!_ ” both Regina and Snow chided in unison, which almost made the sorceress sick to her stomach to hear. Henry however, just rolled his eyes at both of them.

“I know what swear words are,” he told them. “I’m not _six._ ”

“Regardless, you will not be repeating your birthmother’s foul choice of vocabulary words,” Regina told him sternly. All she was met with was another exaggerated eye roll.

“Henry, go downstairs and help your grandfather set the table,” Snow ordered, looking as though her head was about to pop on the spot from the information she had just stumbled upon. “I need to speak with your mother for a moment.”

“As charming as that sounds, Snow, I would much rather speak to my son,” Regina shot back, knowing full well that wasn’t what the woman meant at all.

Still, it hit a nerve and Snow practically growled, “Not _you._ ”

“But I don’t wanna go; I just started talking to them!” Henry whined, stomping his foot on the ground in protest. Emma’s nails raked across her skull for a moment as she let out a long, defeated exhale. She knew there really wasn’t a way to avoid this, and apparently she would rather do this sooner than later.

“We’ll do this again tomorrow, kid, alright? I promise. Just lemme talk to Mary Margaret for a sec.”

Henry didn’t look pleased by that at all, but he relented with an aggravated sigh as he pushed his chair back, allowing the legs of it to scrape loudly against the wooden flooring. “Fine,” he huffed, before storming right out of the room and down the stairs.

Regina moved as well, not particularly wishing to speak to Snow either. Still, they shared a small motel room, and no matter where she went, she would still be able to hear the conversation. Grabbing a book off the bedside table to try to distract herself, she sat down on the bed and waited for Emma to get this over with.

“What are you doing with her?” Snow demanded after she believed to be alone with her daughter. “I thought you were looking for Gold’s son, and yet instead you choose to dump your son on us so you can… God, I don’t even want to know what you’re doing with her, do I? Christ, Emma, what were you _thinking?_ I know you’ve been on a downwards spiral recently, but this is just too far; you _lied_ to us!”

“I didn’t lie to you!” Emma exclaimed, shooting an exasperated look towards her laptop’s screen. “Jesus, Mary Margaret, is that what you really think? That I would fuck all this off, throw Henry at you guys, just so I can… what? Fuck Regina away from you guys’ judgment? Yeah, sounds like a real solid plan; you know, except for the fact that if I don’t find Gold’s son, _I can’t get back to Henry._ So thanks for that conclusion; your faith in me is really touching.” 

Regina snorted disdainfully behind her book. She didn’t know why Emma bothered to explain herself to these people; they might be her parents, but they did not run her life, regardless of how badly Snow might wish they did.

“Then why are you with her?” Snow demanded, sounding both perplexed and concerned by her daughter’s life choices.

“Henry asked me check in on her before I started looking for Gold’s kid,” Emma explained with a sigh. “So I did. It was just for him, so relax.”

“’Just for him?’ You left _days_ ago!”

Regina’s eyes flickered from her book to Emma, her eyebrow rising slightly. The irritating woman did have a point, but she doubted Emma wanted to reveal why she had to originally stay. Emma wasn’t exactly the most forthcoming person about her addiction.

The blonde sighed heavily, leaning back in her chair. “Yeah, I know. I—Regina, she’s um…” Emma noticeably fidgeted in her seat. “Helping me.”

“Helping you?” Mary Margaret repeated disbelievingly, “ _How?_ All that woman has done since the curse broke is hurt you, Emma. We sent her away so you could begin to heal, and yet instead you chose to situate yourself in the same unhealthy environment that made you unravel in the first place?”

Regina’s jaw clenched. No, she was done listening to this.

She was behind Emma before the blonde had even registered that she had moved, coming into Snow’s view as she leaned over, slamming her hands on the desk to get closer to the camera. “Regina, don’t—” Emma tried, putting her hand on the woman’s forearm to try to dispel any forthcoming drama, but Regina was hearing none of it and completely ignored her.

“First of all, in case you’ve forgotten, Henry is _my_ son,” Regina sneered at her. “And if he is not in my care, then I would prefer it if he be with his birthmother. The sooner Emma finds Gold’s spawn, the sooner she will be back and Henry will be away from _you,_ which I would like to happen sooner rather than later. _That_ is why I am helping her, and despite your protests against it, that will not be changing.”

Snow opened her mouth to retort, but Regina wouldn’t let her.

“Second of all, as the only _damn_ person in Emma’s life to actually care what the hell she’s been doing to herself lately, I am the only one actually equipped to help her. You have done _nothing_ to try to help her alcoholism, and the fact that she only got worse while in your care proves that. Yet within just a few days of being with me, she has already made the choice to get help and allowed herself to detox—”

“Regina!” Emma protested fiercely, apparently not wishing to discuss this with her mother. She was ignored however.

“So tell me, Snow, who exactly is bad for her again? Because I’m fairly certain it’s not me.”

Snow’s angry expression fell at Regina’s words and her eyes shifted to Emma, her jaw slacking a little at the unexpected revelation. “You… you’ve decided to stop drinking?” she asked softly, her disbelieving tone mixed with happiness that she wouldn’t yet let dominate her emotions until she heard it from her daughter’s mouth.

“I…” Emma tried, looking awkward about being put on the spot. Her hand went to her hair and she pushed it out of her face, averting her gaze. “Yeah, I—uh, I’m trying… I guess.”

Snow’s face softened as relief flooded across her expression. “Oh, honey…!”

“Look, don’t get all… whatever about it, alright? Just cause it’s out of my system, doesn’t mean it’s outta my head,” Emma told her, not wishing to have the pressure of expectation on her. “I could still fuck up, so don’t make a big deal out of it. It’s only been like a day.”

“Still,” Snow said softly, a small smile gracing the corners of her lips. “I’m… I’m proud of you, sweetie. That’s a big step.”

Emma looked a little disgruntled at that, as all it did was add more pressure, but she said nothing. Then Snow’s eyes found Regina’s, and she paused for a moment, internally struggling with something. Regina raised an eyebrow in expectation, and finally Snow allowed herself to say, though most begrudgingly, “Thank you, Regina. For… for helping her.”

“I don’t need your thanks,” Regina told her shortly. “I did it for her, not for you.”

“Regardless,” Snow continued, although still looked like she was struggling with her words. “It’s… very much appreciated.”

Right. Sure.

Regina didn’t need her platitudes, as Snow could barely say them without looking like she was in intense pain for having to speak to Regina like a human being and not the villain she had painted her out to be. So she just shot her a look before moving away from the camera, giving mother and daughter space again so they could talk, and crossed over to sit on the bed once more.

Emma sighed heavily, looking a little overwhelmed. Resting her elbow on the table, she put her head in her hand as she tried to scramble towards a subject change. “Has Gold figured out anything about the boundary yet?” 

“No,” Snow replied, sounding a little defeated over the subject. “He’s been unable to control his magic while in the house, apparently. But… but it’s only been a few days. I wouldn’t worry just yet.”

Regardless of Snow’s optimism, Regina and Emma caught each other’s eyes, sharing equal looks of concern.

“Your father did arrest Ursula yesterday, however,” Snow told her, trying to at least give Emma some good news. “We believe she teamed up with Jafar and Scar out of convenience more than loyalty, so we’re hoping if we cut her a deal her she’ll reveal where they have been hiding.”

“Good,” Emma responded. “That’s… that’s good. And everyone’s safe? There’s been no other shootings?”

“No, I think they’re lying low for the time being,” Snow answered. “But your father and I still sleep in shifts regardless, and we will until both of them are caught.”

Emma nodded. “Okay, well… just keep me updated on everything. I’ll try to be home soon.”

“Have you found anything on Baelfire?”

“No, but… but I will,” Emma told her, though didn’t sound too convinced by her own words. “I mean, he’s gotta have a paper trail _somewhere;_ I guess I’m just not looking in the right place right now. But I’ll find him.”

“I’m sure you will,” Snow assured her daughter. There was a long pause for a moment before she continued, “I should finish dinner but… Emma, I—I _know_ that things between you and Regina are complicated right now, but for your own sake, please don’t make it even more so. It will only make it that much harder when you have to return.”

“I know what I’m doing, Mary Margaret,” Emma snapped defensively, even though Regina was certain that she really didn’t. The fact that they slept together already proved _that._ “She’s just helping me, that’s all. Okay? Don’t even worry about it.”

“Emma,” Snow began pointedly, her voice a few octaves lower. “She’s wearing a turtleneck when it’s nearly summertime. I may be your mother, but I’m neither old nor stupid.”

Regina’s hand flew to her sleeveless turtleneck, pulling on her collar for a moment as her eyes caught Emma’s. She didn’t realize it would be that obvious, as it was made from thin material and meant for the spring time, but apparently to anyone who knew their past it was glaringly clear that she was wearing it because of Emma. But she had to hide the bruises on her neck somehow, and makeup wasn’t exactly doing the trick. 

“No, that’s—that’s _not,_ ” Emma stammered, her expression resembling that of a deer caught in headlights. “I didn’t give her _hickeys_ or anything. For fuck’s sake, we’re not—I mean, it’s just… Regina, uh—”

Christ.

“Your daughter strangled me,” Regina informed her from across the room, not wanting to listen to Emma stammer for the better part of the next half hour.

“She _what?_ ”

“Fucking jesus,” Emma muttered, shooting Regina a look that could cut glass before quickly telling Snow, “We got into it, okay? It was an accident, or… whatever. I gotta go; I’ll talk to your later.” She quickly clicked the disconnect button and nearly slammed the top of her laptop shut before snapping at Regina, “What the hell!”

“Oh, relax,” Regina hushed, picking up her book once more. “It isn’t as though she’s going to think we did it as part of our kinky sex life. At most she’s going to believe you just got angry with me while drunk and lost control.”

“That’s not—Jesus, that’s not the _point!_ You can’t just tell my mother—” But then Emma stopped, realizing she had said that word out loud, and suddenly looked a little pale. It seemed she was still trying to deny the truth on some level, and admitting it out loud did not help her sanity any.

“Believe me, dear, I don’t like that you’re related to her either,” Regina told her patiently, noticing the look on the blonde’s face. “But you need to accept it. How much you immerse yourself in denial really isn’t healthy.”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” Emma snapped, glaring at her fiercely. “Because if it wasn’t for my fucking denial, I wouldn’t even be able to _look_ at you right now, alright? So just let me do what the hell I have to to cope and stay out of it, because you _really_ aren’t going to like what happens if I start looking at shit clearly.”

Her words hit Regina in the gut and tore through her, causing a wounded look to pass over her face. She had thought… well, perhaps that was foolish, wasn’t it? To believe things might have changed a little between them? Of course they hadn’t; how could they, after what she had done? Emma was just separating Regina’s past actions from the person that she was so she could handle being around her, and that was…

God, that hurt.

“Look, I don’t have time for some kind of therapy session right now, alright?” Emma told her, opening up her laptop once more. “I gotta find Baelfire; _that’s_ why we’re here.”

Regina exhaled a long breath, but said nothing. In the end, she didn’t want to push it. Because if Emma hurt her with just those few words, she really didn’t want to know what would happen if they started discussing everything. One day… one day they would be able to. They would have to, if they ever wished to continue to be around each other for Henry’s sake.

But that day was certainly not today.

[x]

“ _Please?_ ”

Regina side-glanced her from over her own laptop, hesitating at the request. Emma looked at the brunette imploringly, trying not to let her quickly brewing frustration take over her demeanor. But fuck, they were getting nowhere and it was difficult not to let that bother her.

“Come on, it was you who suggested it in the first place.”

“That was before I thought about it, and realized how dangerous it could be for me to consciously syphon magic from you,” Regina answered as she crossed her legs beneath her. “Before it was instinctual, but there isn’t a guarantee it will come as such when I purposely attempt it. This is something I’m not versed in, Emma, and I could accidently take too much and substantially weaken you.”

“So then I’ll take a nap before we find him; what’s the big deal?” Emma countered. “Regina, it could take us months to find this guy otherwise, and you know it. If he went into the system as a kid, and that’s a big _if_ , it’ll still be like looking for a needle in a haystack. He probably lied about his origins, his name, and where his parents are, and even if all of that is listed as unknown in his paperwork, there are still thousands of kids in this country we’d need to weed through to find the right one, and that’s even if he’s _in_ this country. Henry can’t wait that long.”

Regina pursed her lips, her eyes flicking between her own computer screen and the woman situated next to her on the bed. Emma could see that she knew she was right, and her impatience at waiting for Regina to admit to such made her leg bounce against the bed. She didn’t like feeling so frustrated; it made her want to find a solution in something she could no longer indulge in.

“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Your leg. It’s distracting and I’m trying to think.”

Emma exhaled an annoyed breath of air, yet still adhered to Regina’s request and slapped her hand against her leg to stop it from moving. “I’m anxious,” she defended. “I just wanna find this guy.”

“You’re frustrated, and your first instinct is to drink. But you know that you shouldn’t, and _that’s_ why you’re anxious.”

Emma shot her a dark look. “Thanks for that, Little Miss Psychoanalyst. But hey, here’s a thought; why don’t you just help me so I won’t be frustrated? Then I won’t feel like I need a drink, and apparently that’s a win for everyone involved.”

Regina’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t blackmail me.”

“I wasn’t. I didn’t say ‘do this or else’, I just—ugh… _please?_ Come on, you know you’re gonna end up doing it anyway, so can we just save all this back and forth for another time?”

Regina sighed heavily, leaning back against the pillows. She knew Emma was right. “Fine,” she said shortly. “But I’ll need a world map and an object belonging to the person we’re trying to find. Do you even have that? Because without it this conversation is pointless.”

Regina looked as though she expected her requirements would shut Emma down, as she was still wary about doing this, but Emma just jumped off the bed and headed towards her luggage. “His shawl,” she answered, digging through her bags. “Gold gave it to me so when I found Baelfire I could, I don’t know; prove he sent me or… whatever. I’ve got it here some—ah.” After picking up the shawl, she tossed it to Regina, who easily caught it. “Gold spewed some pretty creative threats about me losing or damaging it though, so don’t fuck it up.”

Regina chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before asking, “And a map?”

“That… uh, I’ll have to go buy. Give me like, twenty minutes. I think I saw some at the gas station at the end of the road.”

As Emma began heading towards the door, Regina called out, “Get a few. A world map will only give us a general area; we will need to pin point his location after that, less you wish to trek all over creation. Which, even if you do, I do not.”

Emma obliged her, and within a half hour came back with a stack of maps. Soon they sat beside each other on the bed, a map of the world spread out in front of them. Regina had Baelfire’s shawl in one hand, while her other grasped on to Emma’s. Taking a deep breath, she moved their linked hands until they hovered over the map.

“This might not work,” she warned her. “I’m still unsure of how to do this.”

Emma squeezed her hand reassuringly, trying to give Regina some confidence. The warmth of the other woman’s palm was something she tried to ignore, as its dangerous familiarity drew her in. “Just try. Worst thing that can happen is that we’re back where we started.”

Regina nodded, hesitating for just a moment longer until she closed her eyes. A minute ticked by, then another. 

Nothing happened.

“Maybe if you just try to—”

“Shh,” Regina hissed, squeezing her hand to shut her up. “I’m trying to concentrate. Don’t speak.”

Emma rolled her eyes, yet did as she was told. In the end, she really had no idea what she was doing, so this was all Regina’s show. It seemed like ages, but finally a slight tingling sensation began in her fingers, before slowly crawling up her arm. The feeling caused Emma to shiver. “I think it’s working,” she breathed. “Right? Are you—?”

Regina exhaled an annoyed breath of air, dropping Emma’s hand before shooting her a glare. The tingling dissipated immediately. “What did I tell you about speaking? If you wish for me to do this without drawing too much energy from you, you need to exercise some self-control. This is difficult for me, and I need absolute silence.”

“Fine, sorry,” Emma muttered, feeling her cheeks begin to heat up in annoyed embarrassment. She hated being scolded; it made her feel like a child.

Regina picked up her hand again, holding it above the map once more, and Emma waited. Yet instead of feeling a tingling sensation this time, after a few moments, it felt as though something barreled its way straight into her body. It ran through her veins like fire, hitting the core of her chest so suddenly that it made her audibly gasp and jerk forwards at the unexpected feeling. And then something was being pulled from her, leaving Emma with the feeling of being viciously robbed as she began to feel empty and cold. The loss tore the breath from her lungs and Emma visibly shook, her fingers grasping tightly to Regina’s in panic.

Regina’s eyes popped open and Emma started, noticing that they had clouded over with a deep blue, instead of the dark brown she had become accustomed to seeing. As Emma began to feel lightheaded, a small, victorious smirk formed at the edges of Regina’s lips, and Jesus Christ, it might actually be the creepiest thing Emma had ever seen in her life. Regina was _enjoying_ draining her, like she got off on the feeling.

But then as quick as it came it was gone, the connection between them breaking as Regina suddenly let go of her hand. Emma struggled to breathe as she pitched over, collapsing on the bed. “Fucking _hell_ , Regina!” she furiously gasped, throwing out her hand to slap at Regina’s arm. She felt terribly weak however, so it did little more than just barely get her attention.

Regina blinked, looking as though she were coming out of a haze. But then realization hit her all at once, and her face masked into concern as she reached for her. “God, Emma, _are you alright?_ ”

Emma groaned and slapped the other woman’s hands off of her, a headache pounding relentlessly beneath her skull. “You wanna talk about exercising some goddamn self-control?” she spat angrily. “What the _fuck_ was that? Jesus, Regina.”

“I’m sorry,” Regina quickly apologized, looking ashamed with herself. “I was… frustrated, and I didn’t go in as delicately as I should have once I broke the barrier.”

“Then you should have stopped once you realized what you did! What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I…” Regina tried, her cheeks tinting with shame as she averted her gaze. “You are quite powerful,” she told her softly after a moment’s hesitation. “It was difficult to resist tasting it.”

“Well _try,_ ” Emma snapped, still unable to right herself. She closed her eyes, rubbing her temples. “I feel like I just got my soul sucked or some shit. Fucking hell.”

“I’m sorry,” Regina tried again, her face masking in regret for what she had done. Emma didn’t care about her apology however; she was just interested if it was worth it.

“Whatever, I don’t… I really don’t care right now. Just… did it work?”

“Yes,” Regina told her, taking Emma’s hand in hers to help her to a seated position. “Look,” she encouraged, nodding her head towards the map as she rested Emma against her chest, giving the woman a reprieve from trying to hold herself up.

As Regina’s arm snaked around her torso, holding her closer, Emma’s eyes found the map. There was a soft, golden glow over one spot, and Emma realized where that was immediately. “New York,” she whispered, a small smile gracing her lips. 

They did it. Holy crap, they actually fucking _did it._

“Yes, dear,” Regina affirmed softly, resting her chin on the blonde’s shoulder as she looked at what they had accomplished together. “New York.”

**TBC…**


	17. Devotion

**CHAPTER SEVENTEEN  
Devotion**

Leather bit skin, and the sound of a woman’s muffled scream echoed through a small hotel room in lower Manhattan.

Regina’s skin seared but she closed her eyes, reveling in the feeling it allotted her. It wasn’t merely pain, nor was it just pleasure; it was satisfaction. Satisfaction that, for once, she had provided a proper substitute for the demons that had laid rest in Emma’s mind, for if it wasn’t this, it would have been something far worse.

Emma had fallen apart, the small bit of control she finally had over her life disappearing within an instant as she had found herself knocking on the door to her past, and everything she had strived towards the last couple days ended up shattering around her, cutting into her heart and destroying her sanity.

“ _What did I say about noise?_ ” Emma hissed, her eyes darkening with the only power she had anymore. The leather belt licked Regina’s skin again and the pain shot through her behind as she bit back another scream from behind her gag, trying to be completely subservient despite her innate nature to challenge those who held the upper hand. 

Emma needed this. It was all she had left in that moment.

So Regina stayed silent, holding back every scream, every gasp, every sound. Hands bound over her head to the metal coat rod in the closet, Regina faced the wall and allowed Emma to do as she pleased with her body. Her body ached and the skin on her bottom was raw, but her compliance seemed to bring a momentary sense of calm to Emma as Regina heard her exhale a long breath, and fingers began their decent down the brunette’s body.

“Good girl,” Emma breathed into her ear, the praise sounding almost condescending as fingertips slipped through a sticky gush of arousal. Regina whimpered softly and widened her stance, pushing her backside up against Emma’s body as she silently begged for a reward.

Even if it came though, Regina knew the abuse her body was receiving tonight was far from over. What had transpired today begged Emma to forget in whatever way she could, and it was not something that could merely be fixed with a few licks of a belt. Still, Regina would do whatever it took so that Emma didn’t go searching for a more toxic solution, for taking a few steps backwards was far better than turning and running towards inevitable destruction.

It was a possibility that had become all too real when Regina had finally caught up to her, finding Emma rummaging desperately in her luggage for what she called her emergency stash. “They were just in case!” she had exclaimed, her breathing erratic and eyes widening with panic as Regina tried to take them from her. Despite her efforts though, she had only managed one. “It was just in case and _fuck_ Regina, I’m pretty goddamn sure that this qualifies, okay? So get off my fucking back!”

They were just nips, perhaps five or six, but it didn’t matter. Regina wouldn’t allow her to do that to herself, and words meant nothing in comparison to the haze of unstoppable panic and desperation that had clouded Emma’s mind, and in the end, Regina had ended up doing the only thing she knew how to do.

She dropped to her knees before her.

“What—what the hell are you doing?” Emma asked her, actually looking frightened for a moment at the possibility of Regina pleading with her on her knees. But that wasn’t what this was, nor was it something she would ever do. Regina gave and she took, but she never _begged._

“The name of Henry’s biological grandmother.”

“What?”

Regina looked up at her pointedly, still unmoving from her knees with her hands clasped behind her back. And then Emma’s eyes widened as she understood; their safe word, a name that neither of them would _ever_ utter in bed otherwise. They had never had one before, and even suggesting that they should was a silent allowance for extremes, should Emma need to go to them to achieve what she needed. Regina was basically giving her permission to destroy her, should she be able to handle it.

“You believe your life is not yours,” Regina told her softly, her gaze meeting the floor as she slipped into a role that, outside of Emma’s last birthday, she had never truly had. They played at it, but it was never real. And for this to sate Emma’s desperation, Regina knew it had to be real. “So I offer you mine, Madame Swan.”

Emma’s eyes darkened, her expression etched into something undeniably feral, and the nips were dropped to the floor, instantly forgotten as she began to grasp for a sense of sanity that only Regina had ever been able to allot her.

[x]

“You really need to relax; it’s over now, Regina.”

“Don’t tell me I need to relax,” Regina snapped, still feeling queasy and anxious from their flight out of Logan. She had never been on a plane before, and now she was certain that she never wanted to again. “People are not meant to fly; it’s unnatural.”

Emma snorted. “Says the woman who can _teleport._ ”

Regina shot her a dark look, but said nothing; she was still trying to get her stomach under control anyhow. Why on earth anyone would chose to continuously subject themselves to something so utterly sickening, she would never understand. Glancing at the map in her hand, she looked up at an apartment building before them. “This one,” she told her, nodding towards the structure. “The tracker hasn’t moved, so Baelfire must still be inside.”

Emma inhaled a deep breath, her eyes searching each of the windows for a moment. They then caught Regina’s, her gaze much too invasive for it to be born from something casual. “You ready?” she asked her, however not sounding very ready herself. Raising an eyebrow, Regina looked at her questioningly.

“What’s wrong, dear?”

“Nothing. I just…” Emma scrunched up her face for a moment before glancing at her again. She fidgeted before taking another hesitant breath. Something was obviously on her mind and she was struggling with revealing it. Finally though, Emma asked, “What if the dude doesn’t even wanna come back?”

“His presence ensures that we can get back to our son,” Regina reminded her firmly, maternal instincts overriding all else. Henry had and would always come first. “He will have no other choice.”

“Right,” Emma agreed, yet didn’t sound particularly thrilled with the possibility of doing this by force. Regina didn’t really understand why, as the woman used to be a bounty hunter, until Emma barreled through her previous hesitation and requested, “Don’t—just don’t kill him or anything, okay? Pretty sure this deal with Gold warrants his son being brought back _alive_.”

Emma’s tone was light, like it was some kind of trivial reminder, and how easily the words came to her made Regina want to set something on _fire._

The brunette stared at her, a sickness beginning to creep into her stomach that no longer had anything to do with the plane ride. Emma’s assumption made Regina feel dirty, and the way the woman was looking at her furthered the feeling of worthlessness. It began to enrage her. “Is _that_ what you think of me, then?” she heatedly demanded. “That I’m no more than some murderous psychopath with absolutely no capability for _sense?_ ”

Emma appeared torn between snapping at her in defense, and actually looking kind of guilty from the wounded, angry look that was now plastered across the Regina’s face. She struggled with her words, but Regina wouldn’t allow her to get them out anyhow. “I—”

“You believe I killed for pleasure, don’t you?”

Regina had crossed the space between them, her face dangerously close to Emma’s as she demanded answers. It finally kicked Emma’s defense mechanism into full throttle, and she countered with an angry, “Well you obviously didn’t hate it enough to stop, did you?”

Regina’s open palm connected with Emma’s cheek, and the blonde stepped back and hissed in pain as she grasped for her stinging flesh, her eyes flashing furiously. But it didn’t compare to the look on Regina’s face, and her tone was dangerously low as she reminded her, “You know _nothing_ about my past, Miss Swan. So before you thoughtlessly spew your ignorant assumptions, you should perhaps take it upon yourself to _ask_ about what happened back then. Until then, your opinions on the subject are utterly inconsequential, is that clear? Do not speak of it again.”

Emma’s eyes darkened as she backed away from her, needing to establish space between them before she did something foolish like _retaliate_ in public. “Whatever,” she growled in response. “It isn’t like I’m ever gonna want to know anyway, so fuck it.”

“Of course you don’t, dear,” Regina snorted disdainfully, her whole body still tense with anger as Emma tried to walk away from her. “Because then how on earth would you continue to convince yourself of this black and white villain you’ve so readily painted me as?”

 _That_ made Emma stop.

Whipping around, offense colored Emma’s face as she abandoned all dignity and shouted, “In case you’ve fucking forgotten, it was _me_ who told you that the goddamn world wasn’t black and white, and neither were you. So why don’t you just fuck off with your self-pitying bullshit, Regina, because I know who you are, and you are far from simple in _any_ sense of the word.”

The shouting caused quite a few of the pedestrians’ heads to turn, and Regina’s teeth clenched as she stalked up to her, grabbing hold of the woman’s upper arm before dragging her into the entranceway off Baelfire’s apartment building. “I will _not_ allow you to cause a scene over this; if you wish to scream at me like some irate child, at least have some common decency about it!”

“Fuck you,” Emma spat, ripping her arm from Regina’s grasp. Thankfully, there was no one else in the entranceway, so Emma’s adolescent retort went unnoticed by anyone other than the woman it was intended for.

“Charming, dear,” Regina drawled furiously, her tone condescending and cruel. “And since you so thoughtfully brought up _that_ conversation, need I remind you that it was _you_ who said that you accepted everything that I was, and yet, funny enough, that turned out to be just as much of a lie as the day you told me you loved me.”

It was perhaps that, more than anything else, that had hurt Regina the most. That conversation had completed her, made her feel accepted and loved, for the first time in many years. And in the end, it turned out to be complete shit. That realization had utterly destroyed her, and Regina blamed Emma for ever giving her hope for something that she had accepted many years ago she would never have.

“I do love you, you _fucking_ idiot!” Emma exclaimed, looking at her incredulously as she threw out her hands in a frustrated, hapless gesture. She clearly had no idea what to do anymore. She looked as though she didn’t even understand how they had even gotten here, and Regina felt the same. But it had always been like this with them, hadn’t it? Nothing was good between them for long.

“Love encompasses all things, Emma,” Regina angrily reminded her, feeling her heart weigh heavy in her chest at the sorrow her words held. “You may be bound to me, but you do _not_ love every part of me; you have made that abundantly clear over the past few months.”

“You don’t _fucking_ get it, do you? I do— _shit,_ ” Emma swore, turning around to hit the wall with an open palm, trying to let out her frustration and anger over this entire situation. “Fuck this, Regina! We don’t have time to—we have the rest of our goddamn lives to fight with each other, okay? We can’t do this now! So just _shut up!_ ”

Normally, Regina would be furious with being told to quiet herself, but Emma had cut herself off mid-sentence, and it was that which kept Regina’s attention. “Don’t you dare tell me that you do,” she demanded softly, the words breaking in her throat. “Don’t you _dare_ give me any sense of hope again. You do nothing else but destroy it shortly afterwards.”

“I said _shut up!_ ” Emma shouted at her, her own words breaking from frustration and the sadness that had suddenly erupted across her expression. “If you don’t want me to assume how you feel, then don’t fucking assume you know how I do, alright?!”

Regina pursed her lips into a tight line as she tried to get her emotions under control, and said nothing. Emma was right; they really couldn’t do this now. Still, it was so hard to contain everything she was feeling once it was let out, and she had to turn her gaze from Emma to try to do so, because just _looking_ at her ignited an uncontrollable emotion that she only wished she knew how to handle.

“ _Damnit,_ ” Emma swore under her breath before practically punching the buzzer for Baelfire’s apartment. In a moment a man’s voice floated through the intercom.

“Yeah?”

“Delivery from UPS,” Emma said, her voice still having a bite to it despite her intentions to subdue it. A few seconds passed, then the buzzer for the front door echoed through the entranceway.

“Oh, right. Sure, come on up.”

[x]

Every time they found themselves in this position, Emma wished that she did this to punish Regina. She wished that her anger at the woman outweighed her anger at herself, and every snap of the belt, every bite to the skin, was born from hatred instead of self-loathing.

But it wasn’t.

They were a fucking mess, the two of them. They always had been. They found their pleasure from self-inflicted punishment masked by an illusion of power. Regina _gave_ her the control, and Emma exerted it without a second thought. Regina needed the physical pain of their encounters, but it was Emma who needed the emotional; for every time the woman she loved cried out, every time angry bruises and red lashes were left across Regina’s skin, it tore straight into Emma’s soul and ate her from the inside out.

And yet she got off on the feeling. They both did.

They were _fucked,_ truly, and they both should have been in therapy years ago for this psychological goldmine. Still, there was a sense of comfort in their shared need for self-destruction that Emma couldn’t ignore. She felt drawn to it in a way she couldn’t quite understand, and it was a solution to the madness that overrode all else. Maybe she was addicted to alcohol, but _this_ would always be her true vice.

“Do _not_ come until I tell you to,” Emma hissed in Regina’s ear, holding the gag that was once in Regina’s mouth fiercely around her neck, keeping her captive but still allowing the woman to breathe. The brunette was still tied to the rod in the closet, her wide stance allowing Emma’s fingers to barrel into her from behind. “Do you understand me? Because if you disobey me, I promise you I’ll make you wish that you hadn’t.”

Regina nodded frantically through shuddered gasps, but it wasn’t good enough. Taking her hand away from the gag, Emma’s hand snaked around the brunette’s torso to violently twist one of her nipples. Regina’s knees buckled and she fell against her, crying out in pain as Emma snapped, “Answer me when I speak to you!”

“Yes, _yes!_ ” Regina exclaimed through labored breaths, the words still laced with pain as Emma continued to viciously twist and pull. “ _I understand!_ ” Emma released her hold on her then and Regina choked back a whimper as she tried to right herself again, but it wasn’t quick enough as Emma grabbed hold of the gag once more, pulling Regina into the position she desired her.

The woman was nearly there already, the lashing she had gotten earlier having turned her on to the point that the insides of her thighs were drenched in sticky arousal. It was fucking _mouthwatering,_ but more than that, it was distracting. And Emma knew that was the point to all this; to distract her enough to not fall apart, and to allow her to get out her crippling emotions in what was probably not the healthiest manner, but by far the most preferred one. Anger and helplessness had rotted her insides, and the desperation to not feel like a pawn in destiny’s sick game had consumed Emma whole as she began to seek power over the only person who apparently gave a shit enough to realize how badly she had needed it. 

Sometimes she hated Regina for knowing her so well, but in this moment, Emma could have dropped to her knees and profusely thanked the woman for being so perfect in her complete fucking disaster. It was what she needed. _She_ was what she needed.

Emma’s fingers had snaked around Regina’s hips to find their home against her clit, the pressure she put on it enough to make Regina tremble as she desperately tried to hold herself back. Her breathing was coming out in tight bursts, her moans beginning to resemble whines as the pressure in her abdomen started to become unbearable. Emma watched her in acute fascination, observing Regina emit every ounce of self-control she had inside of her as she sought to adhere to Emma’s demands. But the longer it went on, the more she began to fall apart.

Regina was shaking now, her entire body trembling within Emma’s firm hold as she struggled to keep her knees locked and herself standing. The noises she was making barely even sounded human, and Regina choked back a sob as desperation for release overtook her. “Please,” she begged, voice tight as a singular tear slipped down her cheek. “ _Please!_ ”

“You could always make it stop, you know,” Emma breathed into her ear, testing her despite it being terribly cruel to do at this point. But some part of her needed to know how far Regina was willing to go for her, what she was willing to sacrifice for her. Was she really doing this for _her_ , or did Regina need this because she too ended up being fucked sideways from Emma’s past blowing a hole into their little dysfunctional family? She hadn’t exactly hidden how upset she was over the revelation. “You know the word, Regina, just _say it…_ ”

But despite the overwhelming feeling, the pleasure bordering on agony, Regina didn’t budge. “No,” she choked out before trying to bite back a scream of frustration, her body thrashing against her bounds as she used everything within herself to keep holding on. 

Emma had to wrap her entire arm around Regina to keep her from moving, however her hold was not as firm as she would have liked due to the brunette’s entire body being sheened in a light sweat from the control she was exerting. Regardless, it kept Regina still enough to continue her assault on her clitoris without her jerking away, and Regina was practically sobbing in desperation at this point, her painful pleas cutting through Emma’s soul as she waited for Regina to just give in and prove her right.

It never came though, and Emma began to fear that Regina was going to hurt herself if she kept this up much longer. The woman barely had control over her own body anymore, all of it being focused on one singular thing to even acknowledge how much strain her muscles were under. It was fucking _awe-inspiring,_ if Emma was to be honest. It was fucked up and practically torture, but Regina endured it for _her_ , and that spoke volumes louder than any of her words ever could.

“Come for me, Regina,” Emma finally breathed into her ear, pressing her fingers as firm as she could against the woman’s sex as she rewarded Regina’s diligence with the sweet promise of release. “Come all over me; I wanna feel how _fucked_ I got you. _Do it!_ ”

And then Regina fucking _erupted._

The force of her orgasm was violent and intense, and all of that pressure being released at once seemed to kick her body into some kind of desperate need to get it all out, because fluid _gushed_ from between her thighs as she screamed, soaking Emma’s legs and part of her pelvis as Regina collapsed into her.

“Oh, holy _sh—!_ ” Emma exclaimed, her eyes nearly bugging out of her skull from the unexpected response. Her words cut off though as Regina’s entire body weight fell against her, and Emma had to struggle to keep the woman upright so she didn’t pull anything from the momentum going against her restraints. 

Regina was trembling and crying, the aftershocks of her orgasm coursing through her as her frail mental state from the experience utterly destroyed her. Emma held her close, cradling her head in one hand as her other worked on getting Regina’s bindings undone. “Shhh,” she hushed, her own voice broken with emotion at the intense show of submission and loyalty Regina had given her. It was fucking amazing and Emma wished she knew how to express how it made her feel, but all she could do was try to comfort her. “Shh, it’s okay. You did good, you did _so_ fucking good…”

Emma brought Regina carefully down to the floor, cradling the woman as she continued to shake and sob in her arms. “I’m gonna take care of you now, okay?” Emma promised her softly, words tickling Regina’s skin as fingers weaved tightly in raven locks. “You did _so_ fucking well, Regina, and I promise you I’m gonna make sure you know how much I appreciate that…”

Because she did. _Jesus_ , she did. That was fucking incredible.

“ _Anything,_ ” Regina choked out against her neck, the word barely even audible from how hoarse her voice had gotten. Tears wet Emma’s bare skin, and she held onto the brunette a little tighter as Regina struggled to elaborate through her post-orgasmic haze. “Anything… for you. _A-Always._ ” She coughed to try to clear her throat, and she whimpered from how painfully raw it was. “Fucking under—understand that, Emma. _Please._ ”

Emotion welled up in Emma’s throat, tightening it and causing her vision to blur as she felt the truth in the statement. It was intense and it was honest, and Emma wished she had realized just how much Regina was willing to sacrifice for her happiness before now, despite how much harder it really made everything between them. “I know, baby,” she assured her, because if nothing else, tonight Regina had sought to prove it and had succeeded with flying colors. In that moment, nothing else mattered. “I fucking _promise_ you I know that now.”

A weak sounding scoff was muffled against her skin before Regina demanded in a broken voice, “Don’t… call me that.”

Emma laughed, not really knowing what else to do. Everything she felt was so damn overwhelming, and Regina’s words reminded her of a time when they were happy. She wanted to keep that – _God,_ did she want to keep that – but the rest of the world was such utter shit, and no matter how much Emma tried to immerse herself in the good, it seemed the bad always had a knack of showing up at just the wrong time.

[x]

“Don’t you fucking touch me!” Emma exclaimed fiercely as she shoved Neal, fucking _Baelfire_ , away from her, his wounded face blurring before her as angry tears stung the back of her eyes. She didn’t care how he felt about having a son; it _never_ warranted his touch. “You fucking sent me to prison, you soulless bastard; I had our child in _jail,_ and you actually think I want you _near_ me?!”

“You were—fuck, Emma, you were the one that knocked on _my_ door, you know—” Neal tried to defend, looking completely overwhelmed by how his day had exploded in the span of five seconds. The emotions in the air were conflicting and intense, but Emma would barely let him get a word in edge-wise, feeling as though she was trapped in her worst goddamn nightmare as her anger and sorrow tore through her heart and polluted her veins.

“Because your freaking father—Jesus, did you _know?_ ” Emma demanded, the words sounding hoarse and raw as she struggled to keep anger as her dominant emotion. “Did you fucking—was this all some goddamn homesick _bullshit,_ and when you got tired of reminiscing you just, what, _threw me away?_ Jesus, I can’t—” A roar of helpless frustration tore from her lips and Emma’s hand collided with the floor lamp, causing the bulb to shatter as it made impact with the floor.

“Emma!” Regina called out, her voice sounding so goddamn _worried_ about her and her pathetic mental state, despite how furious she had looked before that this had brought them to the door of their son’s _father._ She had accosted Emma like she could have actually fucking known that they were one in the same, and then the sorceresses thoughtlessly spewed out the word ‘father’ in her anger that, Jesus, screwed everything up just a little bit more.

Emma couldn’t handle this. She just _couldn’t._

Arms were wrapped around her and Emma lashed out, but Regina kept her grip firm. “Relax,” she encouraged her, even though it was the most hypocritical thing the woman had ever uttered to her. Still, Regina knew what anger and helplessness brought her, and her concern was written all over her face as she tried unsuccessfully to subdue the woman’s consuming emotions. “Breathe, Emma; please, just take a second and _breathe,_ alright? I promise you, he’s not _near_ worth this.”

But it didn’t matter what Neal was or wasn’t worth, because it was fucking her sideways regardless. Emma had thought she’d never see this man again in her life, and yet it turned out that he was from the same world she was, and everything, _everything_ just seemed like one big ‘screw you’ from destiny as it laughed at her from afar.

“I thought it was the right thing to do!” Neal pleaded with her, guilt and shame written plainly across his face as he confronted something that, he too, believed he would never have to deal with. “Emma, please, you have to understand—”

“I fucking understand _perfectly!_ ” Emma shouted at him, starting to feel lightheaded as Regina began to instinctively syphon magic from her, knowing that it was the only way to hold the blonde back since strength wasn’t exactly on her side. 

It was like a vice, containing her when all Emma wanted to do was lash out at the world, and it was probably the most suffocating thing she ever felt. And god, Emma _hated_ it, despite knowing that she really needed to be stopped because she was _this fucking close_ to beating the man within an inch of his life. Emma had known betrayal; she had felt it from Regina months before, but to have this on top of that? It overwhelmed her, unable to allow her to see sense as she needed to just _make it stop._

Fuck her. Fuck him. Fuck _everything._

“You couldn’t deal with being a father, so you _fucked off_ and left me to—”

“I didn’t know!” Neal shouted, looking at her as though his entire world was crumbling apart as well, and Jesus, he had no goddamn right. “Jesus, Emma, do you think I really would have done to that you if I had known? You didn’t _tell_ me!”

“You shouldn’t have fucking done it to me _anyway!_ ” Emma screamed, barely able to even see him anymore because of the tears that assaulted her vision. “I _loved_ you, you worthless piece of shit; and yet you treated me like I was—!”

But Neal kept defending himself, like it even mattered in the end. “August told me that you had a destiny!”

“ _Fuck_ my destiny! Fuck it and _fuck you!_ ”

Emma was crying now, furious tears staining her cheeks as Regina held her. She hated everything about her life; it was just one shit show after another and fuck, she was so goddam sick of it all. Neal’s emotions were starting to get the best of him as well, and he looked like he was trying to hold himself together as he struggled to come up with words to express how he felt.

“How could you—shit, Emma, I mean… I get what I did was fucked, okay? And you have _no_ idea how much I’ve regretted that every day of my goddamn life, but you—how could you not even bother to tell me that I had a _son?_ Don’t you think that I had a right to know; that _he_ had a right to know?”

Emma felt like something inside of her snapped at the blame he dared put on her, but it was Regina who spoke. 

“He is _not_ your son,” Regina growled, the words angry and cruel. “You are _nothing_ to that child, nor will you ever be. He is irrelevant to the conversation at hand, so I suggest you keep your tiny little brain locked onto something you actually have a say in.”

“I’m sorry, but who the fuck are you again?” Neal bit back, furious that some random stranger had just put him in a place he didn’t believe he belonged in.

“She’s his _mother,_ you idiot!” Emma exclaimed, wishing she could revel in the look of horror that flashed across his face. “What, did you think they’d let me keep my baby while I was in _jail?_ He got thrown into the system thanks to you, and fucking _thank god_ Regina adopted him because if she hadn’t—if he… _fuck_ , if Henry ended up being a foster kid for the rest of his life, do you even _understand—_ ”

But the words choked up in her throat, her own past experiences beginning to haunt her once more at the very worst of times. Emma felt like she was falling, and it didn’t matter how guilty Neal looked because he knew – he fucking _knew_ what had happened to her in there – since everything was too screwed up to even process properly in the first place. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way, and all Emma could think of doing was drowning in the escape that she had recently favored.

She needed to drink until she couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t _breathe._

“I’m sorry,” Neal said finally, his words heavy with despair as he watched the woman he once loved fall completely apart. But Emma barely even registered it, her mind locked on to only one thing now.

“Let me go,” Emma demanded, desperately struggling against the brunette’s hold. She needed to run. She needed to breathe. She needed to drink. “Goddamnit, Regina, fucking _let me go!_ ”

The hold was broken immediately and Emma stumbled away from her, away from him, away from _this_ as she barreled out of his apartment and down the stairs, unable to deal with her emotions any longer. 

She wanted them gone, _needed_ to feel blissful fucking nothingness, and screw it, screw sobriety, and screw promises, because she was going to see to it that she did even if it was the last goddamn thing she ever did.

[x]

Regina hissed as the ointment came into contact with her reddened and raw backside, and Emma bit down on her bottom lip as she began to smother it across her skin. “Sorry,” she whispered to the woman lain out on her stomach before her, no longer wishing to cause her anymore pain. But this had to be done, and they both knew it. As it was already, Emma was actually worried that she might scar; the belt had broken Regina’s skin quite a few times, and because of the haze of power she was in before, she hadn’t noticed until now.

“It’s quite alight, dear,” Regina assured her softly, her voice still sounding rather hoarse and frail. She was exhausted, and Emma was surprised she hadn’t passed out yet. If it was her, she would have slept for a week straight after an ordeal like that.

Still, Emma didn’t really think it was alright, and her silence more than stated that. She felt like she had gone too far in her desperation to just… _feel_ like something other than a chess piece being moved around the board for other people’s amusement.

Regina turned her head to the side to look at her, and seeing the guilt on her face, she firmly reminded her of their arrangement. “Emma, if I hadn’t wanted this, I would have never allowed you to do it.”

“I know,” Emma whispered, because she did. Still, Regina’s body looked horrific and it was her fault. The symbolism of Regina’s sacrifice wasn’t lost on her – as, God, it was the only thing she could think about after what Regina had allowed her to do – but now that the dust had settled and reality had set in, it only made Emma feel like shit. 

Here Regina was, fucking putting Emma before everything and everyone, even herself, and all Emma could ever be consumed with was her own bullshit problems to even see that, despite everything that had happened between them, she had devotion that most people could only dream of.

What the fuck was _wrong_ with her, that she couldn’t even take a second out of her life to appreciate that? It wasn’t even like she deserved it, and yet all Emma could do was shit on it over and over again.

“Emma,” Regina strongly continued, watching the emotions play out across the blonde’s face and knowing what they meant. “If you belittle the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had in my life with your needless guilt, _so help me._ ”

“I’m—I’m not,” Emma stumbled, tearing her eyes away from Regina’s prying gaze in the hopes that the woman didn’t realize that they were beginning to mist over. She swallowed hard, squeezing more ointment into her hand before lathering it on the affected skin once more.

Regina watched her out of her peripheral as silence fell between them. “Tell me what you’re thinking, love,” she requested softly after a long moment, and Emma’s words came without thought, finding herself too emotionally exhausted to hide anything any longer, and the syllables ended up catching in her throat from the emotion they caused her.

“I fucking hate myself for not appreciating you.”

Regina froze for a second before immediately turning towards her in surprise, the quick movement making her hiss out in pain. But Regina seemed to barely register it for more than a moment, because she then situated herself half up on her side so she didn’t put any weight on her wounded area, taking one of Emma’s hands into her own.

A tear fell from the blonde’s eye before she turned away from her, unable to show her how terrible everything made her feel, and Regina sucked in a sharp breath at the sight. “Emma, this… it’s been an emotional day,” she reminded her softly. “You’re still feeling that, but you shouldn’t—please don’t let it consume you by layering more on top of it. You don’t need that right now.”

Emma wouldn’t listen to her though, the thought already having planted itself firmly in the darkest corner of her mind. “It’s such _bullshit,_ you know?” she sniffled, hating how pathetic she had become because of the hands life kept dealing her. She was supposed to be stronger than this. “I can’t get over it, and I want to. I… God, I _hate_ feeling like this, Regina, because all you’ve fucking done lately is help me regardless of how much of a cunt I’ve been, and instead of appreciating you for who you are, I can’t help but still hate you for who you were. And I just—fuck, I just want it to _stop._ ”

Regina’s face etched in emotion, but when she opened her mouth to speak, Emma wouldn’t let her. “And now there’s fucking _Neal,_ ” she choked out, her words mixing with the force of her tears as they intensified beyond her control. “And everything’s so screwed up, and I don’t know how to handle that when I can’t even handle _you,_ and Jesus, I don’t know what else to do but beg you to fix it like some pathetic child, and that’s so _fucked_ because I don’t deserve anything that you could ever—”

“Emma,” Regina pleaded, her own voice choking up as she cupped Emma’s damp cheek with her palm. “Please, stop. We have the rest of our lives to talk about us, but for now, you need to calm down. You can’t handle this level of emotional turmoil, and you’re just making it worse for yourself. _Please,_ ” she breathed, leaning her forehead against the other woman’s as she cradled the back of her neck protectively, “Please, just stay here with me right now, in this moment. Nothing else exists, do you hear me?”

Emma choked back a sob and nodded, trying to do as Regina requested because God, she was right, she couldn’t handle this. This day had been one massive shit show after another, and she felt like she was suffocating beneath the weight of it. 

A thumb grazed her bottom lip softly, and Emma pulled back a little to look at the woman before her. “I love you,” Regina whispered, keeping her in a moment that Emma wished she permanently resided in, because this, _this_ was the only goddamn thing that was good in her life. If all the other factors disappeared, Regina just loving her with the intensity that she did would be nothing short of a perfect life.

Emma swallowed hard before reaching up and brushing the hair from Regina’s eyes, her fingertips trailing down the side of the woman’s face as she became mesmerized by a fleeting desire that they both knew could not last. “I love you too,” Emma breathed in return, a small, sad smile gracing her lips before she leaned in, allowing herself to forget that the rest of her crappy life even existed, even if it was just for a moment.

Because no matter what else happened, no matter what had transpired between them, Emma knew that she could always count on Regina to mend things after they had shattered. And _that_ , she knew, was more than she could ever ask for, and far more than she ever really deserved.

**TBC…**


	18. Past

**CHAPTER EIGHTEEN  
Past**

Regina’s fingers fisted in the sheets, a sleepy, breathless gasp falling from her lips as she awoke with a head between her thighs.

It felt like déjà vu, for the last time Regina had given control entirely to the woman who shared her bed, she had awoken the next morning with the same sensation. Perhaps, in Emma’s mind, it was her way of apologizing for the pain she had caused, despite the fact that she had no reason to feel guilty for it. Still, back then they were in a far different place then they were now, and even though Regina knew that Emma needed sex as a distraction last night, she really hadn’t expected to wake up this morning with a tongue halfway inside of her.

Regina stirred, a soft whimper escaping her lips as she began to lift her hips from the bed. She was lying on her stomach, as her backside was still far too sore to put weight on, and her erect nipples were beginning to strain against the mattress. Emma stopped for a moment, realizing Regina had awoken, and she placed a soft kiss on the back of the brunette’s knee.

“You gonna get pissed at me again…?” she asked, her voice husked with sleep, and it was then that Regina remembered that the last time this had happened, it hadn’t gone particularly well. But back then Regina hadn’t wanted to wake up next to the woman that currently was in her bed, and now she found it was the only thing she ever wanted to do anymore.

It’s funny, how one’s brain can pick and choose the things to remember. And perhaps, in a way, that was what Emma was doing now, for if she had taken everything into account between them when she first thought of doing this, it was unlikely that she would have ever even began. Still, Regina wasn’t a fool, and she planned to enjoy it while it lasted, for it seemed that things between them never stayed good for very long.

“No,” she breathed, her hips craning for more contact as Emma placed feather-light kisses up her thigh, coming closer once more to the junction between her thighs. “Don’t stop,” Regina begged softly, a whimper escaping her throat as the blonde’s fingers ghosted lightly over her dampened flesh. “Emma, _please…_ ”

Emma fucked her slowly, taking her time drawing every moan, every gasp, every plea from Regina’s parted lips. She spread her open with her fingers as she slipped both of her thumbs deep inside of her, and her mouth never left her throbbing center until Regina was shaking, panting, begging, _coming_ for her in an intense wave of pleasure that Emma had taken careful time to build and execute. And as Regina lay there, her flushed cheek pressed against the coolness of the sheets, Emma carefully situated herself next to her, face only inches from the brunette’s as she looked into her eyes.

Regina wished she could read minds. The expression on Emma’s face was hard to decipher, and as Regina tried to catch her breath, she gently lifted one hand and ran the tips of her fingers across Emma’s jawline. “Talk to me,” she encouraged softly, knowing at the very least, Emma had something that she needed to say.

Emma hesitated for a moment, inhaling a long breath of air before she spoke. “I want to stay here,” she admitted in a whisper, and Regina’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Manhattan?” Emma shook her head, not expecting Regina to really understand. The brunette felt her throat tighten as she revised her question. “With… with me?” 

There was something terribly frightening about that, because in the back of Regina’s mind, she knew that Emma would only want to because of what happened with Neal. In the end, it had seemed she had deemed Regina the lesser of two evils, something she could at least begin to understand, but that didn’t mean that she wanted it. Regina knew that – it killed her – but she knew that. They had a long way to go if there was even a _hope_ of them being together again in that way.

Emma swallowed hard, and an unexpected tear fell delicately down her cheek. Regina wiped it away with the pads of her fingers, and the blonde took a shuddered inhale of breath as she admitted, “I know it’s selfish. You can’t pretend with me forever. But it’s just… easier, sometimes; hiding from everything while I’m with you. I’m so…” But Emma choked up, another tear slipping down her cheek as she admitted, “I feel so fucking _weak_ , Regina, and you—”

“No,” Regina told her firmly, cupping the other woman’s cheek in her palm as she looked deep into her eyes. “Emma, listen to me; you are not weak. Having an addiction, being unable to handle seeing your ex like that, that’s… it’s _human,_ it’s—”

“If it’s so _human,_ then why am I the only one falling apart?” Emma asked her bitterly, her words being broken by her sorrow. “You don’t understand, Regina, you _couldn’t—_ ”

“No?” Regina countered, feeling her heart begin to beat harder in her chest as she allowed herself to reveal her own weakness. “You really think I don’t know what it’s like to have something consume you, to take you over completely and destroy your life? I watched my mother go down that path and like the ignorant child that I was, believed I could just touch it, just once, and be stronger than that; stronger than _her._ ”

“But I wasn’t,” Regina admitted softly, feeling emotion begin to well up in her throat, “because people like us, Emma… we can’t just touch something once and let it go. If it masks its horror with a feeling of freedom, we drown in it without question, because all we want is to no longer feel like a victim of circumstance and cruelty. And yet, in the end, it’s probably all we’re ever going to be, because if something isn’t destroying us, we feel apt to destroy ourselves. It’s all we’ve ever known.”

Emma’s brow creased as she blinked away her tears, not understanding at all what Regina was referring to. “Regina, what are you…?”

Regina looked at her incredulously. How could she not _know?_ They were so alike, and because Regina saw so much of herself in Emma, she believed the other woman would as well. But Emma had been so consumed with herself as of late, that perhaps she hadn’t realized that the person she was bound to was so very much the other side of the same coin.

“When I… when I realized that I was in love with you,” Regina began softly, trying to show Emma what she meant in a way that she could relate to, “I wanted all of you. I wanted to… to touch, to feel, to love, to consume, to be a part of everything that you are. But there was a part of you that I left untouched, because I hadn’t known it was there. But when I did…”

Regina’s hand cupped the side of Emma’s face, her thumb slipping over her bottom lip before, without any warning, she focused on what it was that she needed, and _pulled._ It wasn’t physical, but Emma felt Regina begin to take the very essence that made her _her_ , and her lips parted in a gasp as her eyes widened in shock. It was like a hunger, consuming Regina from the inside out as she tasted the purest power she had ever felt. She wanted to devour her whole, take everything that Emma was and keep it for herself, and the desire was frightening in its ferocity. 

And should it have been anyone else but Emma, Regina knew she would have syphoned every ounce of magic from her soul and left her to wither. The feeling of her, it was the most intoxicating thing she had ever felt.

Still, what Regina felt for the woman she stole from gave her the strength to stop, or at least, she had believed so. However when the time came for her to pull away, Regina found that she couldn’t. Panic erupted inside of her and it took a moment to realize it was because Emma had a vice-like grip around her wrist, holding her hand where it was. “Emma…?” she gasped, perplexion settling across her face. “Stop, I… I need to let go.”

Emma stared into her eyes, her chest heaving from the feeling of being robbed of her sense of self, and she asked her in a scratchy voice, “If you don’t, could it… could it kill me?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Regina stressed in a panic, needing her to understand that now was not the time to play games like this. She was just trying to make a point, and fuck, she should have just spoke instead of acted. “Emma, let… let me go _now._ ”

Emma shook her head, and fear ignited in Regina that perhaps Emma was trying to get her to _kill her,_ until the blonde told her in a weak voice, “Heal yourself.”

“…What?”

“You’re not… you’re not as fucked up as you think you are,” Emma told her heavily, walking a dangerous line for reasons Regina couldn’t even begin to understand. “Darkness isn’t the only thing that’s inside of you, so… so I don’t _care_ if you don’t think you can’t do it consciously, because you healed me once before with my… with whatever you’re taking from me, and I… I need you to do it again.”

“ _Why?_ ” Regina demanded breathlessly, still unable to understand why Emma was doing this. This was some kind of test that she wasn’t nearly prepared for, and the subject terrified her to death, because her body reacted to the physicality of their touch. Her body ached for the magic that resided inside of Emma, and once that barrier broke, Regina was able to control her consumption unless she stepped away from her.

And right now, she couldn’t.

“Because if you don’t,” Emma told her softly, simply. “I’m going to die.”

Regina felt like she was going to vomit. She was already taking way too much from her, and the stronger she got, the weaker Emma became. She tried to use her magic to blow Emma back from her, but the addict inside of her couldn’t allow separation from the source, and the longer Regina fought and failed, the more desperate and fearful she got.

Emma was starting to look very, very pale.

“Emma, stop it!” she exclaimed, her voice five octaves higher than it should have been as her throat constricted with anxiety. But Emma didn’t move, using every bit of strength she had to keep Regina touching her. Stubborn until the day she died, which Regina was in an absolute panic about coming far too soon.

“I trust you, Regina,” Emma told her softly, giving her a small, drained-looking smile. “Don’t… don’t let me die, okay?”

No, this was very much _not_ okay!

But the longer it went on, the more frightened Regina became that she was cutting this far too close, and the desperation inside of her struggled for an answer she didn’t know how to find. Because she couldn’t, God, she _couldn’t_ kill Emma because of her own worthless fucking addiction to power, and it terrified her to death that perhaps, senselessly, it was stronger than her love for the woman before her. But love, True Love, was supposed to be the strongest of all things in this world, and Regina refused to lose her over something that, in the end, meant so very little when put up against how completed she became when Emma found her way into her life.

The magic wasn’t for her, it was for Emma. And when Regina realized this, when she thought less about herself and more about the woman before her, loving her, protecting her, saving her, sating her every desire and need, was when something was born inside of her that felt lighter than anything she had ever experienced. It wasn’t like when she healed Emma, because this… it wasn’t instinctual. Regina reached for it, grasped for every thread of it and manipulated it into something of her own making and suddenly, the aches she felt subsided, and the throbbing fell away to nothing as she became whole again.

And then Emma let go.

Regina choked back a relieved sob before shoving the blonde hard in the shoulder, pushing her away from her as she struggled to get into a seated position. “Don’t you _ever_ do that to me again!” Regina demanded, wrapping her arms into herself to force herself to stop shaking. She felt manipulated and dirty; the worst parts of her being brought to light and exposed for all to see. She despised it with everything that she was.

“I’m sorry,” Emma apologized softly, her eyes falling closed as how weak Regina had made her suddenly hit her full throttle. “I just… wanted to help,” she breathed, sounding very close to passing out. “Since you… helped… me…”

And then she was out cold, and Regina was sobbing, finding herself quite unable to deal with everything that that experience had made her feel.

[x]

“I _am_ being careful; it’s not—fuck, it isn’t like… out of everyone; I mean, I’m the _last_ person that she would ever—”

Regina blinked heavily as she awoke, confusion washing over her as it took her a moment to remember where she was. She hadn’t realized she had fallen asleep again whilst crying. It seemed Emma had already awoken as well, and although she was taking her phone call in the bathroom behind a closed door, Regina could still hear her words loud and clear. Hoisting herself into a seated position, blinking the sleep and dried tears from her eyes, Regina listened carefully, trying to figure out who she was talking to.

“—That isn’t your decision, Mary Margret!”

_Oh._ She should have known. Emma sounded frustrated beyond measure, and hearing the word ‘her’ meant that Snow was arguing, once again, about Regina’s involvement in all of this. She shouldn’t be surprised, but it still irritated her.

“Well _you_ don’t have to trust her,” Emma snapped after a moment. The second’s ticked by and then Emma told her mother, “You can take that to mean whatever you want; it doesn’t change anything. And I have to—I have to _go,_ okay? I’ve already wasted enough time, and I can’t afford to let him disappear again. I just… I don’t know, thought you would want to know what was going on.”

A skeptical expression crossed Regina’s face, because she was certain that however that conversation went, it hadn’t included the whole truth. It didn’t sound at all like she revealed to Mary Margaret who Baelfire really was.

“Yeah, I know,” Emma responded softly, so low that Regina had to strain to hear. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Just… lemme know if he has any ideas.”

Emma made a murmured sound of acknowledgement followed by a ‘bye’, and when the bathroom door swung open, the blonde noticeably started when she noticed Regina was sitting up in bed. “Shit, sorry,” she apologized, unable to meet the woman’s gaze as she held onto the threshold of the door, putting all of her weight against it. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“You don’t look well,” Regina told her softly, her eyes drinking in Emma’s haggard appearance. It seemed she still hadn’t recuperated yet from Regina draining her.

“I’m fine,” Emma assured her, though it was less than convincing as she almost stumbled getting herself over to bed to plop down on the mattress. “Just, you know, still a little dizzy. Whatever, it’ll pass.”

Regina pursed her lips, lines in her face becoming etched from disappointment and anger as she told her exactly what she thought of her little stunt earlier, “You never should have done that. It was terribly foolish of you. If I had—”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” Regina demanded, hating how confident Emma sounded in that because she herself wasn’t at all. They played with fire, and perhaps it didn’t kill her, but Emma ended up burned all the same.

“Because,” Emma began as she moved to lie on her side, her exhaustion still very much a predominant factor after what had happened. She pursed her lips for a moment, looking up at Regina beneath her lashes as she pushed the hair from her eyes. “You… said it yourself, you know? That you would do anything for me. And, I don’t know, I… I believed it. Maybe you should too.”

Regina’s throat tightened and she averted her gaze from her. “You’re an idiot.” There were more words, more reasons, but they never came. It didn’t matter anyway; Emma had done what she had done, and thought herself right for it. And perhaps she had made some sort of a point, but ‘doing anything’ for someone didn’t always guarantee a successful outcome, because sometimes there were just things that one could not feasibly do.

“Maybe,” Emma murmured in agreement, using her arm as a makeshift pillow as she looked up at the woman sitting next to her. “But I was still right.”

Regina scoffed at that, but didn’t argue against her. In the end, she really didn’t want to have this conversation. She had spent so much time focusing on Emma’s problems that she hadn’t even realized how uncomfortable it would be for her to share her own, despite knowing that it would allow them to relate to one another. It was… that wasn’t how that was supposed to go, and now Regina needed to run as far away from it as she could.

“Your mother called,” she mentioned instead, not posing it as a question, as she already knew. Emma murmured a small sound of acknowledgement and Regina’s gaze found the blonde’s face once more. “ _And?_ ”

Emma let out a loud sigh, apparently not too keen on talking about it. Picking at the bed sheets, she hesitantly revealed, “She… well, I guess _Gold_ has a theory – you know, about why the curse didn’t break right – and Mary Margaret is, uh…”

“Blaming me, of course,” Regina finished for her, figuring that it would be Snow’s first assumption. When something magical went wrong, it must be her fault. Although to be fair, more often than not, it really was. Still, the audacity of the woman only stood to aggravate her, as she was fairly certain she was not the one who caused the curse to become defective.

“Yeah, kind of,” Emma admitted, sounding guilty on behalf of her mother. She sighed heavily, running her hand over her face to try to clear her thoughts. “I don’t know. _She_ doesn’t know, really. But I guess Gold now believes that the curse didn’t break right because it ended up conflicting with another, whatever that means.”

Regina’s eyebrows rose. “He believes there was another curse?” she asked disbelievingly, because if that were the case, it most certainly wasn’t her fault; the only one she had cast was the one that brought them all here. Still, it was viable; two curses surrounding the same target could counteract with each other quite terribly, and cause one or both to become unstable.

But who else would have cursed the entire _town?_

Emma shrugged at Regina’s questioning look. “That’s the only thing he’s come up with that even makes sense apparently, even though I don’t…” A frustrated sigh slipped past her lips and the blonde moved to lie on her back, looking up at the ceiling. “I mean just… go figure, right? Everything’s always such shit, so why _wouldn’t_ there be another curse? That’s just how life goes for us.”

“Emma, I don’t… I think Gold may be mistaken,” Regina told her, trying to not let the woman get wrapped up in unwarranted pessimism. “It might make perfect sense, but in all reality, the only two people capable of cursing an entire town are myself and Gold, and if neither of us did it, then it doesn’t seem viable.”

Emma said nothing, and it spoke volumes.

“What?” Regina asked, looking down at her. “What are you not telling me?”

Emma took a deep breath, her eyes flicking to Regina’s for a moment before hesitantly telling her, “Nothing. It’s… it’s nothing.”

Regina didn’t believe that for a moment. There was a certain way that Emma looked when she lied, and right now her expression told far more than her words could. “ _Emma._ ”

“…I didn’t tell her.”

Regina’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“About Neal,” Emma answered, exhaling a long breath as she fisted her hands and pressed them over her eyes. “I acted like he was some random guy, because I don’t know how to fucking tell her… _anything,_ really. I don’t even know how to deal with it; I just fuck off and fuck _you_ and try not to think about how I can’t just put it off seeing him again forever and I just… I can’t talk about it with her. I don’t know how.”

Regina pursed her lips into a firm line before informing her, “You’re deflecting the conversation.”

“Yeah,” Emma actually admitted, sighing softly as she sat up to lean back on her hands. “Just… let me right now, okay?”

Regina chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment, before finally relenting with a nod. She just had to hope that, when Emma was ready, she’d reveal what she had been hiding from her. Regina didn’t like it, but she didn’t want to push her; Emma was in a fragile enough state as it was.

Silence enveloped the room for a moment, and then Regina admitted softly, “Emma, I… I don’t want that man near our son.”

Emma’s eyes found hers, taking a moment to read what lay beneath Regina’s expression. Finding what she was looking for – apprehension, possessiveness, fear – Emma’s brow furrowed as she told her, “Regina… Neal, he’s—he’s not gonna end up being some kind of _replacement_ for a proper family. I mean, are you kidding me? I can barely even look at him, let alone even _think_ of being with him again, even if it was just for Henry’s sake; and you know, I think when you put our parenting skills up against each other, it’s pretty damn clear that biology means absolute crap. He’s not Henry’s family; at most, he’s his sperm donor as much as I was his incubator.”

Regina shot her a dark look. “Don’t you dare talk about yourself like that. You’re more to that child than some random woman who gave birth to him, and you know it.” 

Emma looked like she was about to retort, but Regina didn’t give her the chance as she outwardly deflated and allowed her paranoia over the situation to consume her. “I merely… I _know_ that we have to bring him back, despite how many reasons we both have to not want to, and it’s… it’s difficult to believe that it won’t change anything. He’s Henry’s biological father, your first love—”

“That means _nothing,_ Regina,” Emma told her firmly, and like a part of her couldn’t even believe they were having this conversation. “And you know it. With… you know, with what we _are_ to each other, would you leave _me_ if your first love suddenly showed back up in your life?”

Regina’s stomach tightened as she avoided eye contact and reminded her pointedly, “You’ve already left me, dear.”

“Yeah, and let me tell you how well that one worked out for me,” Emma shot back sarcastically, gesturing to the space between their half-naked forms just inches from each other on the bed. “I did such a great job of it, _obviously._ ”

Regina exhaled a disbelieving breath as she hoisted herself off the bed, needing to establish some space between them. “Sex is meaningless,” she harshly reminded her. “You use my body as an escape from your problems and I let you; that doesn’t, in any way, mean that you are mine.”

“Fine, maybe not,” Emma responded, accepting her point as valid. “But I’m pretty sure that, whether I like it or not, I’m gonna be yours more than anyone else’s for the rest of my goddamn life.” Her eyes connected with Regina’s. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Regina stayed silent.

“Neal fucks me up,” Emma admitted, her throat sounding a little tight at those words, “but he doesn’t fuck _us_ up, and I’m not about to let him fuck up Henry either.” 

Regina continued to say nothing, shifting her weight between her feet as she tried to formulate a response, a _reason_ for why she still felt so utterly uncomfortable with this entire situation.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

Regina looked over at her, taken a little off guard as she was torn from her thoughts. “What?”

“If your first love came back into your life, would it change things? Would you go to him, and leave what you felt for me behind?” Emma asked her, a small sliver of vulnerability painted across her face despite how confident she was trying to sound. “Because if you can answer me that, then maybe you’ll understand why Neal is so very much _not_ a factor in anything.”

“Daniel is dead,” Regina bit back angrily, her gaze boring into Emma’s. “So it’s not a relevant comparison, because he will never come back into my life even if I wished him to. Neal is here, _now,_ and he is not going away. So I would appreciate it, dear, if you did not try to comfort me with anything related to _that._ ”

Emma looked like she had been slapped across the face. Her jaw slacked, and surprise and upset etched across her face as she reached for and stuttered over her response. “Oh… oh _God_ , Regina, I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t… I didn’t know.”

Regina wrapped her arms around her torso and turned away from her, fighting the urge to not get emotional over it. “I know,” she admitted softly, because Emma hadn’t, and it would hardly be fair to blame her for it. Still, it was not something she needed to remember right now, on top of everything else.

“How… did he die?” Emma asked hesitantly, clearly unsure of whether or not she should even ask. Regina said nothing though, continuing to stare at the far wall as Emma chewed on her bottom lip. “It’s fine, Regina, you… you don’t have to tell me. It’s okay.”

Regina swallowed, feeling tears prickling the back of her eyes. She shook her head to try to hold them at bay while she ran her fingers through her hair. “You are not ready for that conversation, dear, believe me. You even said yourself yesterday that you wished to know nothing about my past.”

“I was angry,” Emma told her softly. “That doesn’t…” Releasing a soft sigh, Emma looked out the far window and admitted, “That doesn’t mean that I don’t need to. If we… I mean, there’s always going to be an ‘us’, you know? No matter how much I fight against it, that’s not gonna change. I get that now. I still fucking _hate_ that apparently neither of us have a say in it, but I get that there’s nothing I can really do about it anymore.”

“And I… I can’t promise that knowing about your past is going to change anything for the better, or that it won’t make things worse,” Emma continued after a breath, her words soft and honest. “But it’s probably stupid to avoid it forever, because one way or another, I’m gonna find out. And I just…” She took a deep breath, gaze finding Regina’s once more, “I think it’s probably better if I find out from you, you know? That’s… that’s what you wanted, right?”

“Yes,” Regina breathed, and it was the truth, despite how very not ready she felt for it. Inhaling a shuddered breath, Regina allowed herself to sit on the edge of the bed, her arms still wrapped firmly around her midsection. She stayed silent for a long time, and Emma merely watched her as Regina tried to come to a decision she didn’t know if she was ready to make.

“Why do you want to have this conversation?” Regina asked after a long moment, glancing at the blonde out of the corner of her eye. “Is it merely because you find me easier to deal with than Neal right now?”

Emma worried her bottom lip as she shifted on the bed. A small shrug followed. “Maybe,” she admitted softly. “But last night was…” Emma struggled to find a word to describe it, but came up blank and sighed. “I think you’ve earned the right for me to hear you out, at the very least. But it… it doesn’t have to be about this, if you don’t want. And it doesn’t even having to be right now. Just… something, someday, that you think I should probably know. And I’ll listen, okay?”

While Regina was glad that Emma finally understood what she meant to her, what she would do for her, it still didn’t diminish her anxiety about the conversation. There was a part of her, a very large part of her, that _needed_ to tell Emma everything, for the woman was so much a part of her that to keep her in the dark seemed so terribly wrong. Yet Regina hadn’t spoken about that part of her life for so long that she didn’t know how to start, nor if she even could.

Silence passed between the two women again as Emma waited for her to come to a decision. A hand slid across the mattress and tentatively covered her own, and Regina looked down at it and then up into Emma’s eyes before she began softly, “Daniel was our stable boy.”

Regina tore her eyes away from Emma’s face as the woman squeezed her hand reassuringly, and the brunette’s voice hitched as she told her, “He was… kind, gentle. He saw me as a person, and not some faceless title of nobility, or someone’s—my _mother’s_ property. Which I had… spent a great deal of my life believing as though I was nothing but.” 

A tiny, yet sad smile graced her lips and she breathed, “He saw who I really was, when no one else had even bothered to look before. He made me feel like I mattered, because to him… I did.”

Blinking rapidly to try and keep her tears at bay, Regina inhaled a deep breath and continued, “But I knew my mother would never allow me to marry him. I was… she told me I was meant for much grander things, and it seemed nearly everyone was beneath what she believed I was worth. Until, one day, Daniel and I were meeting secretly in the fields, as we so often did, and a… a wild steed ran past us, a young girl holding onto it for her life as she screamed for help…”

Regina’s jaw locked and she allowed herself a moment’s pause, trying to keep her emotions at bay; all the anger, the resentment, and the regret was bubbling up inside of her, yet she tried to force it down to continue her story. “I saved her,” Regina whispered. “I saved her, and what was supposed to be the right decision ended up destroying my entire life.”

“My…?” Emma asked her, yet the word didn’t come. The woman was still wary about saying it out loud, but it didn’t matter because Regina knew what she meant.

“Your mother, yes.”

Emma’s brow furrowed, her expression stating plainly how she didn’t understand how Regina began to hate her mother if all Snow was guilty of was nearly getting herself killed. But Regina wasn’t finished, and Emma must have assumed so, because she didn’t ask the question she was obviously wondering. She kept herself quiet, waiting for Regina to continue.

The brunette swallowed the lump in her throat, her mind flashing back to a time she would rather forget, and tears began to well up in her eyes. “I think my mother planned it. Somehow, I… I don’t know how, but the next day, Snow’s father came to our castle and—” Regina sniffled, dabbing the undersides of her eyes with the pads of her fingers. She hated this; she hadn’t even gotten to the worst part and already she was crying. She didn’t know how she was going to make it through this story.

“Leopold’s Queen had died, leaving Snow without a mother,” Regina told her softly. “And… and despite the fact that I only had a handful of years on the girl, he believed I would be best suited for the role, and asked for my hand.” Regina swallowed hard, still staring at the far wall, and revealed, “My mother, of course, accepted on my behalf without a care as to how I would feel about it. Leopold was… he was near my father’s age, and while that wasn’t exactly uncommon in the Enchanted Forest, it still made me…” Regina exhaled a small sigh, feeling foolish because of her mother’s lectures about the subject being ingrained in her mind. Still, she revealed to Emma, “I was not comfortable with it.”

Emma scrunched up her face, her thumb slipping over the back of Regina’s hand. “That’s… I get that.” The blonde shifted uncomfortably in her seat, a question on the edge of her lips that took her a minute to even ask. “Were you, uh… how old were you, exactly?”

“Eighteen,” Regina told her, then laughed bitterly as she wiped a stray tear from off her cheek. “Although my mother was already well on her way to deeming me an ‘old maid’ before that; most girls within noble families were married off right after they first bled. Age did not matter; merely the ability to produce heirs.”

“Oh, _ew,_ ” Emma responded, her face masking into one of disgust as she thought about how old those girls had to have been. “That’s totally fucked, Regina; especially if most of the dudes they got married to were a lot older.”

“That was the way of things,” Regina told her softly, shrugging lightly. “Therefore, my feelings of discomfort over the situation were harshly reprimanded. I was to become Queen, and that was all that mattered. My life, from thereon out, was meant for nothing else but the satisfaction of the King, which my mother made sure I—that I understood exactly what…”

Regina’s words dissolved into a choked sob as she placed her hand over her mouth in some desperate, yet useless attempt to hold herself together. But her mind was trapped in memories she did not wish to revisit, and there were some things that Regina could never voice out loud anyhow. Not to Emma, not to anyone. They invaded the darkest corners of her mind that elicited nothing but shame and disgust, and if Regina could not even accept them, then it was unlikely that anyone else would either. And she couldn’t _bear_ having someone think of her the way she thought of herself.

“I’m sorry,” Regina choked out, feeling the need to apologize for reasons beyond her understanding. She knew she was privy to having emotions and feeling them, and yet speaking about her past tended to jolt her back into a mindset it took years for her to overcome.

Emma looked a little at a loss about what to do to comfort her, and after a moment a tentative hand got placed on Regina’s lower back, rubbing slow circles with her thumbs at the base of her spine. “It’s okay,” she whispered, not really knowing what else to say. The blonde was still fidgeting uncomfortably though, having so many questions but seemingly unwilling to push them upon Regina when she was like this.

Finally though, Emma told her softly, “To be honest, every time you talk about your mom, it kind of… freaks me out. I don’t really know why, but it just… something about her seems really fucked up.” She tried to catch Regina’s gaze, but the sorceress would not give it to her. “And I… you know, I don’t really _care_ if ‘that was the way of things’, she still sounds like she looked at you as a possession and not an actual person.”

“She just…” Regina tried, wiping away more fallen tears with the base of her palm. “She merely wanted what was best for me…”

“Sounds like a load of bullshit, if you ask me.”

“Well I didn’t,” Regina snapped, finally turning to look towards her, eyes bloodshot and angry. “My mother may have been sadistic in her lessons, but I know she believed she was doing the right thing. She thought she was teaching me, trying to… to make me into the best version of myself that I could be. It may not be the purest love in the world, but she _did_ love me.”

Regina had to believe that. She just _had_ to. It was the only thing that made living it bearable.

Emma pursed her lips, but said nothing to contradict her. It was obvious that Regina’s feelings on the matter weren’t going to be swayed, and as she already held so many conflicting feelings about the woman who raised her, Regina really didn’t want to raise the issue. Cora was dead, and that part of her life was over; it was best to just forget and move on.

“So,” Emma began hesitantly, trying to steer the topic of conversation back to what they were meant to be talking about. “You… you married Leopold, and then Daniel, he… did he die later?”

Regina shook her head, taking a shuddered inhale of breath as she tried to suppress her tears. Her throat was already tight and scratchy, and she still had more of this story to tell. It took a few long moments, but she finally spoke again. “No, Daniel… he and I, we were—we were going to run away together.”

“I had gone to him, after Leopold proposed,” Regina explained, trying to focus on the comforting hand on her lower back instead of her own plaguing memories. “I… I asked him to marry me; to run away from that place and be with me forever. And he…” Another sniffle followed, despite her efforts to hold it in. “He fashioned me a makeshift ring from off of one of the saddles, and I bound myself to him instead of the King.”

“ _Oh,_ ” Emma breathed, realizing how bad that would have been should anyone have found out. “Oh, fuck. Did someone—?”

“Your mother,” Regina answered, the words coming out forced from the tightness in her esophagus. “She saw Daniel and I kissing and ran off, and I feared she would tell… so I—I followed after her.”

“She was so upset,” Regina remembered, tears stinging the back of her eyes as she stared out the far window, seeing nothing but her past outside of it. “But I… I explained to her that I loved Daniel, and eventually she… seemed to understand, was even happy for me that I had found love. So I made her promise to not tell anyone what she saw, especially not my mother of all people, and Snow… she—she _swore_ to me that she wouldn’t…”

“Shit,” Emma swore softly, piecing everything together in her mind as she watched Regina choke back another sob and wipe at her eyes. She looked sick to her stomach as she found herself assuming the worst, and assuming it correctly. “She told her… didn’t she?”

Regina pressed a hand to her lips, feeling her tears fall delicately to her fingers, and nodded as she tried to control her emotions. “The day Daniel and I were to… to run away, my mother—she found us in the stables. Snow had told her everything.”

Her tears were unstoppable now, her sorrow choking the breath from her as Regina struggled to finish, “And she… my mother, she pretended to understand, pretended to _care_ for my happiness, and yet—” The sobs got louder then, her whole body beginning to shake with the force of them, and strong arms wrapped around her form in a gesture of comfort. “His heart,” Regina gasped out, using every ounce of strength she had inside of her to tell Emma the whole story. “She… reached in and—there was… it was just _dust_ and he…”

“Jesus,” Emma breathed out in horror, cradling Regina’s head in her hands as she the woman collapsed against her, unable to say anymore. “She _killed_ him?” Regina tried to nod against her chest, but her answer really didn’t matter anyhow, as Emma merely seemed to be reaffirming it out loud, to outweigh her disbelief that something like that had actually happened. It was so very much not part of the world that she knew.

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispered against Regina’s skin, placing a kiss on the woman’s forehead as she tightened her grip, trying to protect her from a past that she could not touch. “Fuck, Regina, that’s… that’s terrible.”

It had been such a long time since Regina had allowed herself to feel any of this again. Putting the sorrow she felt for Daniel’s death in the deep recesses of her mind, she focused on her blame and anger. But here, _now,_ all there was was despair and agony as Regina replayed the night in her mind, hating herself for ever allowing it to come to pass.

It took a long while until Regina was able to speak again. Eventually though, her eyes had no more tears to shed, and she just laid her head on Emma’s chest, staring at the far wall. She felt so terribly numb. 

“It was my fault,” she whispered finally, unleashing a burden that Regina had, for so many years, tried to pretend didn’t exist. To her, back then, it was everyone’s fault but hers, for it was so much easier to unleash her revenge on others, instead of on herself. 

“No, Regina— _no,_ ” Emma insisted, the fingers that were threading in Regina’s hair fisting for a moment to get the woman’s attention. Even still, Regina didn’t look at her. She couldn’t. “That’s fucked up. Your mother was the one who killed him, _not_ you.”

Regina shook her head, sucking in a deep breath as she pressed the pads of her fingers beneath her eyes for a moment. They felt puffy and raw. “No,” she breathed. “I… I knew what my mother would do, should she have ever found out. I was selfish in trying to keep him, I was foolish in trusting a child to keep my secret, and Daniel… he lost his life for it.”

Emma noticeably blanched at her words. “You… what do you mean you _knew_ what you mother would do to him? Jesus fucking—how mentally _damaged_ was that bitch?” she exclaimed, her horror over the situation apparent in her tone. “Christ, I just—how did you…” Emma stumbled over her words, not really knowing how to express herself after learning that. “I mean, I just… I can’t even _imagine_ your childhood. I’ve had my share of bad experiences, believe me, but fuck—none of my foster parents were _murderers._ ”

Regina worried her bottom lip, not really knowing how to justify her life, yet trying anyway. “It was… that was just the way I grew up; it was all I knew—”

“No, _fuck_ that,” Emma told her strongly. “I don’t care if it was ‘all you knew’, because you should have never had fucking known that in the first place.”

Regina released a soft sigh, wishing she could appreciate Emma’s protectiveness over her in that moment, but the truth was, it did nothing to repair how damaged her childhood experiences had made her. “You cannot change the past, dear,” she quietly responded. “So it’s not worth getting angry over something you can’t control, and it’s pointless to complain when you’re reaping the benefits from what kind of person it shaped me into.”

Emma noticeably bristled in defense. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Regina turned her head to look at her finally, and the darkness of her eyes pierced the light she was confronted with. “Why do you think I need to be subjected to pain, to feel as though I’m satisfying you?” she countered softly. Guilt flashed in Emma’s eyes, but Regina reached up to cup her cheek. 

“I’m not saying its okay,” she continued, “to have this kind of thought process. It’s not. But I’m not the only one walking around with the scars of my past, Emma. I’m not the only one trying to turn abuse into trust. What we do to each other… it’s how we cope. It’s what we need. And despite the fact that every day, I wish that both you and I had never gone through the things that we did, in the end, if one of us had had a happy childhood, we would have never been right for each other. We would never relate, and we certainly would never be able to help each other heal.”

“And are we?” Emma questioned softly, looking as though the answer to this question might make or break her. “Helping each other heal?”

Regina pursed her lips, wishing that she could say with some confidence that they were, but she couldn’t. “Maybe not right now,” she admitted softly. “Things between us… deteriorated, and until we can repair that, the only thing we can work towards is trust.”

Emma swallowed, her eyes shifting away from Regina’s gaze as she asked, “And what if we can never fix it?”

Regina gave her a soft smile in return. “The fact that you even asked that, instead of telling me for the thousandth time that it’ll never happen, shows me that for once, dear, we may actually have a chance at it after all.”

**TBC…**


	19. Proposition

**CHAPTER NINETEEN  
Proposition**

_Trust._

That was what Regina believed they were working towards, and Emma wished that it were only that simple. For the fact of the matter was, in every way that probably really mattered, she _did_ trust Regina. Despite everything else, Emma knew who she was inside. She knew that Regina would always protect those that she cared for, as her devotion to love seemed to rival the fierce lust for revenge that she had once held. Regina, she… she felt everything so strongly, an all-or-nothing sort of sense that shaped her into both a vengeful evil queen and a devoted mother and lover. And at the end of the day, when it came down to it, Emma knew that Regina wasn’t the Evil Queen from her son’s storybook; at least, not anymore.

So she trusted her, in that sense. Emma would have to be an idiot not to see that Regina didn’t wish her or her loved ones harm. Vengeance wasn’t what was important to her anymore.

Still, Emma found it difficult getting past the fact that the woman that shared her bed was a murderer, and despite not only knowing, but _understanding_ why Regina became the person she had, Emma doubted that there was anything she could say to make that fact mean less. And fuck, a part of her really wished that there was some magical way to make the deaths of countless people not matter, because the selfish part within Emma desperately craved the feeling of being with her True Love like nothing else she had ever felt before.

God, she just wanted things to feel _simple_ again.

But everything was far from simple. It had killed Emma inside, to watch Regina break down over what had happened to Daniel; fucking _enraged_ her, to know that it was her abusive bitch of a mother who did something that horrible to her. And what was even more fucked up, was the fact that Regina was so goddamn starved for her mother’s love that she instead chose to focus her blame on a _child._

As it was now, Emma was certain that Regina did, at least partially, blame her mother for Daniel’s death, but back then? It didn’t sound like it. Then again, Emma knew she didn’t have the whole story. Regina ascending to her title of Evil Queen may have started the day her lover died, but it definitely didn’t end there. Still, there was something so fucking _twisted_ about Cora that even the thought of the woman made Emma’s stomach churn. Their relationship sounded like Stockholm Syndrome more than the bond between a mother and daughter. Not that Emma knew much on the subject, but still; Regina’s insistence, even still, that her mother _loved her_ and _just wanted what was best for her_ screamed fifteen different layers of screwed up.

Thank god the bitch was dead.

Regina’s tears had subsided, and now the two women lay next to each other on the bed, Emma’s arm wrapped protectively around the older woman’s waist as Regina just stared at the far wall silently. She had tried to tell her about the day she was crowned Queen, but she didn’t get past pushing her mother through the looking glass before finding herself too upset to continue. Emma had told her that it was okay and began to hush her, as Regina had already rehashed so many old wounds today that if she continued, Emma was afraid it’d begin to break her. As she looked now, Regina appeared positively haunted.

And if Emma was to be honest, she was glad Regina had stopped there, because she didn’t think she could stomach hearing anymore either. She knew what Regina would have been forced to do after she was wed, and it sickened her to think about. Emma was fairly certain that given the way Regina grew up, she would have been expected to remain a virgin until she got married. Which meant that her first experience wasn’t… it wasn’t with someone she loved, but someone who probably just climbed on top of her like she was some goddamn piece of property and just—

Emma shut her eyes and willed herself to think of something else. _Anything_ else.

It’s ridiculous, how she had never even really given a thought to how fucked up Regina’s life must have been to push her in that kind of a direction. For so long, Emma had had trouble connecting life in the Enchanted Forest with reality. Although she knew that Regina was the Evil Queen just as she knew that Snow White and Prince Charming were her parents, they still felt like stories. Just tales told in a children’s book. But Regina’s story was far from a fucking children’s story, and hearing the woman talk about it, seeing the emotion in her eyes and the sadness etched on her face, made it easier for Emma to realize that it wasn’t just some fucking fairytale; these were people’s _lives._

Emma had long made camp in her denial, even after the truth had been painted clearly in front of her. It was just so _absurd,_ and part of her was hoping that she would wake up and find that it was all some really elaborate dream. But it wasn’t a dream, and Emma was never going to wake up from it. _This_ was the reality she lived in now, and she needed to just learn to accept it so that she wouldn’t fall off the wagon again in some vain attempt at sanity. 

Still, it was difficult. A part of Emma still wanted to pretend all of that didn’t exist, just to make everything so much simpler, but she knew she couldn’t. So what was she left with? Trying to accept the fact that the parents she spent her life searching for were very much here, alive, and the same freaking _age_ as her, and that she was life-bonded to an Evil Queen through the most powerful magic in the world.

It was going to take some time.

“You can’t stay here all day, dear.”

Regina’s voice was raspy, her throat still raw from crying. Emma’s hand stilled on the woman’s stomach, abandoning her task of distracting herself by tracing idle patterns against her abdomen, and she sighed. “I know.” 

“You have to talk to—”

“I _know,_ Regina,” Emma interrupted, her tone more biting than she actually intended. Releasing a soft breath, she revised with a gentler, “I know, okay? I know we have to bring him back, and I get that means that I have to talk to him. I just… I don’t know if I can right now.”

Regina turned in her arms, situating herself on her back so she could look the blonde in the eyes. Her own were puffy and raw, and Emma instinctively brushed the pads of her fingers beneath them, her lips creasing into a frown. She despised how much the two of them cried lately; love was supposed to make everything better, not tear them both to shreds.

Regina clasped Emma’s hand in hers, guiding it away from her face. That wasn’t what was important now. “I could come with you, if you’d like.”

Emma worried her bottom lip for a moment, feeling rocks inhabit the pit of her stomach. The thought of speaking with Neal made her want to drink her entire weight in whiskey, but she used Regina as a crutch too much as it was. In some fucked up turn of events, the woman had basically become _her_ savior, which wasn’t a really healthy way to look at her either. She couldn’t just expect Regina to always save her, especially when she’d done shit for reciprocation. 

God, once they were done with this fuckfest and were out of Storybrooke with Henry, they were gonna have to go to therapy for a _long_ time. They’ve already made it abundantly clear that they don’t know how to have a healthy relationship on their own.

“No, it’s… it’s fine,” Emma finally forced herself to say. “I need to… Neal is _my_ past; I gotta learn to put on my big girl panties and just deal. I can’t hide behind you for the rest of my life.”

“I’d let you.”

Regina’s words were heavy with a kind of emotion that Emma knew better than to try to name, and she sucked in a sharp breath as she looked down into the woman’s darkened gaze. “I know,” Emma whispered, because she knew what kind of person Regina was now; what kind of person she was for _her._ Still, that didn’t make it okay.

Regina, it seemed, in her desperation to prove that she was no longer the Evil Queen, had reverted to an extreme opposite. She wanted to protect her, love her, _save_ her. But she seemed to become more of a sacrificial doormat than anything else, and Emma hated that. Despite how good it made her feel to be cared for in such a way, that wasn’t the Regina she knew. She used to be so strong, so put together, and although that never really went away, it became so terribly suppressed. Emma just wished Regina could find a balance; but then again, wasn’t that the most hypocritical thing ever? She was a fucking mess too, and even with her newfound desire to quit drinking, that didn’t mean she was getting better anytime soon.

Emma sighed heavily, pulling away from Regina to collapse flat on her back as she looked up at the ceiling. “God, we need so much fucking therapy,” she mumbled.

Regina bit the inside of her cheek and shifted in the bed, propping herself up on her elbow to look down at the blonde next to her. Her brow was furrowed, and Emma couldn’t for the life of her understand why she looked so confused about that when _clearly_ they really needed some goddamn professional help, but then Regina asked her softly, “Are you… I mean, I’m fairly certain that we both might benefit from something like that individually, but are you… are you saying you want us to go to counseling _together?_ Or were you just—”

“I don’t know,” Emma admitted with a sigh, turning her head to look at the woman next to her. “I don’t wanna… you know, actually _say_ that we need therapy together, because then it might seem like I’m—”

“Implying that you want to be with me, when you do not,” Regina finished for her, unable to keep the sadness she felt from the assumption out of her voice. Emma shot her a look, not really enjoying being interrupted.

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Regina.”

“Well wasn’t that what you were going to say, dear?” Regina countered, giving her a knowing look. “You don’t know if you want to go to couples therapy with me, because you’re afraid it might give me the wrong impression. But considering I’m already painfully aware of the fact that you no longer want to be with me, it wouldn’t—”

“I don’t _know_ if I want to be with you, okay?!” Emma snapped, her hands that were previously tangled in her hair in frustration being slammed down on the mattress. “I just… I don’t fucking know right now. It’s not… walking away from you isn’t that fucking simple, alright? _Believe_ me, Regina, I tried.”

Emotion etched on the brunette’s face at that, but Emma wouldn’t let her speak.

“And don’t get onto me again about ‘giving you hope’, because if anything’s doing that it’s some stupid, unchallengeable force that neither of us have any kind of goddamn control over. But I just… I fucking _look_ at you, and it’s… it’s just…” Emma’s voice hitched, a sudden wave of emotion washing over her that she couldn’t even hope to control as she continued sadly, “you’re the only _home_ I’ve ever had, you know? When I’m with you, I feel like… like I’m…”

“Where you belong,” Regina finished for her softly, her eyebrows creasing empathetically as she gently touched Emma’s face, her thumb ready to wipe away any tears that the blonde wouldn’t yet allow to fall. “I know,” she breathed. “I know, because I feel the same way. But I… I understand that it’s difficult for you, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t everything you deserved to have.”

“You’re fucking _more_ than I deserve to have,” Emma countered, her tone angry as she pushed herself into a seated position and away from Regina’s touch. She was more furious with herself than anything else though. “At least… I don’t know, _recently,_ anyway. It’s just— _Jesus,_ ” Emma exhaled in a wave of frustration, pushing the hair back from her eyes as she tangled her fingers near her scalp. She looked at Regina helplessly, finally allowing herself to voice something that she never had the courage to before.

“I just want to forgive you,” she told her softly, her throat tightening at the painful admission. “I don’t… I don’t wanna fucking do this anymore, Regina. But… God, what kind of _person_ does that even make me, you know? You killed people. You… you killed _Graham._ And I…” Emma choked back a sob, her face etching in distress as a singular tear fell from her eye that she violently wiped away. “I just want it to not _matter._ How fucked up is that? How—”

“Emma,” Regina tried, reaching out to place a hand on the woman’s leg. Her voice shook a little, but she seemed determined to stay a voice of reason in a situation that, fuck, didn’t even have any as she told her, “I think that… that it may be far too soon to have this type of conversation. There is a lot you don’t know, and should you even decide that you do want to be with me, I would…” She sighed softly, looking at her regrettably, “I would love it, of course, but it… it wouldn’t be right. I’d spend the rest of our relationship wondering if you would still want to be with me if you knew the whole truth, and I believe you would as well.”

Regina was right, and Emma knew that, but it still didn’t help her sate how conflicted she felt inside. But then again, maybe nothing would. Maybe they would always be this screwed up. Maybe this kind of pain was what both of them deserved. 

Emma sniffled, wiping away the evidence of distress on her cheeks as Regina continued. “I’ll tell you everything, if you want to hear it. But not… not right now. I can’t—it’s just too much,” she admitted, taking a moment’s pause to chew lightly on her bottom lip as she picked aimlessly at some invisible lint, trying to not let her demon’s consume her once more. Taking a breath, Regina continued, “But eventually, if you wish it, you’ll know everything; and perhaps then you’ll know if my sins are something you could ever forgive. But for now, just…” Regina looked up at her, exhaling a soft breath as she finished, “Just take it one step at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself with this, because we have a long time to try to get it right.”

“But what if we never can?” Emma asked softly, her voice sounding so terribly fragile. “What if… what if there’s something out there that won’t let us get it right?”

Regina furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

Emma sighed heavily and looked away, shaking her head as she ran her fingers through her hair. “Nevermind,” she mumbled, because she just… she couldn’t tell her. Not yet, not when she didn’t know if it was even true. It was just some stupid _theory_ and if Gold was wrong, then Emma didn’t want to get Regina worried for nothing.

The problem was, even for it being some random thought, it had a lot of fucking basis that Emma wished she could ignore.

Gold believed there was another curse that counteracted with the previous one, but the thing of it was, it wouldn’t have been the whole town that was cursed. If that was the case, then Regina’s wouldn’t have even worked the first time around. This other curse seemed to only counteract with the _breaking_ of it, and the only two people that were involved in that were herself… and Regina. 

Regina, who terrorized people for years under her monarchy. Regina, who made herself a lot of goddamn enemies during that time, some of who were likely to take revenge. Regina, whose life never seemed to go the way she wanted it to. Regina, who sought for happiness for years and could never really find it.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Regina found happiness with _her,_ so if Gold was right, and Regina _was_ cursed, wouldn’t she not have been able to find her True Love? Plus, if Emma thought about it, Regina’s crappy life started way before she ever became the Evil Queen, and who would have cursed her then? Her mother?

…Her _mother._

But as quickly as that theory came it was dismissed, as even that didn’t ring quite true with Emma, despite her own desire to place blame on the wicked woman. She obviously didn’t know Cora personally, but from what Regina had told her, despite the woman’s abuse, she had wanted nothing more than to push Regina to the top of the food chain. Cursing her wouldn’t have achieved that; it would’ve just torn her down. So that didn’t make sense either, despite Cora being the only magic-user that Emma knew of outside of Regina and Gold.

And _Gold_ didn’t make sense either, because he wanted the curse to break properly so he could find his son.

Which then made Emma worry that maybe _she_ was the one who had been cursed, because that’s what Mary Margaret was so adamantly afraid of. She feared Regina found a way to curse her before she was even born, but if that were the case, wouldn’t Regina have told her? She had been fairly honest with her recently, and that’s not exactly something she would just leave intact, if that were true. Emma would like to believe that Regina would try to rectify it, but then again, what the hell did she know, _really?_ She knew nothing about magic, and for all her knowledge, the crap could have been unintentional on Regina’s part in some kind of… magical outburst or _something._

God, just thinking about all this gave her a headache. Emma didn’t want to obsess about theories of something that Gold didn’t even know was true yet, but part of her couldn’t help it. _Something_ went wrong when they tried to break the curse that day, that much was obvious, but at the moment, no one really knew what exactly had happened.

And that was why she couldn’t tell Regina right now. They had far too much other crap to deal with before they even started to rectify _that_ situation.

“Emma?” Regina gently prodded, brow furrowed as she tried to make sense from the woman’s silence. “What is it? You’re keeping things from me again.”

Emma sighed softly, leaning back against the pillows. “I just…” She almost admitted it, _almost_ , because god she hated having this all stuck in her head with no one to make sense of it, but instead she replied with, “I think that maybe we really should go to therapy. Together. Not as… not _together_ together, but just together, you know? Once… once we settle down somewhere. Cause… God, we’re a fucking mess, aren’t we? And we’re gonna have to deal with this crap between us if we ever hope to raise Henry in some kind of semi-sane way.”

Regina tilted her head to peer at her for a second, as if she knew that wasn’t what Emma was really thinking about before, however she let the change of topic slide as she responded, “As much as I agree with that, dear, you do seem to be forgetting that the only therapist qualified – and believe me, I use that word _very_ loosely.” An eye roll followed, then a continuance of, “The only person able to help us with our… ‘special circumstances’, per say, is trapped in a town that neither of us can get back inside of.”

Emma noticeably deflated. Fuck, she had forgotten about that. They couldn’t go to anyone else outside of Archie; at least, not unless they wanted to book themselves a one way ticket to the loony bin. And short of Archie leaving Storybrooke, which Emma doubted would happen, they weren’t actually left with any other options.

“Hey,” Regina prodded softly, touching Emma’s ankle to get her attention when she noticed her expression clouding over. “We’ll figure it out, alright? But we’re a long way from that as well, so try not to worry just yet. Let’s just focus on what we _can_ do right now.”

Emma sighed, knowing what that was. “Getting Neal to come back with us.”

Regina nodded, and Emma pursed her lips as she turned to look out the far window, anxiety beginning to creep up her spine from the inevitable situation that she didn’t know if she had enough sanity left in herself to face. But in the end, it didn’t matter what she did or did not believe she could do, because she _had_ to. Neal was the way back to their son, so despite everything else, despite all her weaknesses and fear, Henry had to come first.

Emma might not have had a lot of experience when it came to being a mother, but putting her son first was a decision she never had to question was right. It’s just what parents had to do, and so… so she would. She just fucking _prayed_ that she could handle it.

[x]

“Do you… uh, want some coffee, or…?” Emma’s eyes darkened from across the small table, causing Neal obvious discomfort in a situation that was difficult enough already, and he awkwardly nodded. “Okay, um…” He looked up at the waitress in front of their table. “Just one then. Milk, no sugar.”

The waitress wrote down his order, but just as she was about to leave, Emma sat up a little straighter in her chair and ordered, “Coffee; black, one sugar. Thanks.” Neal shot her a look that she ignored, as really the only reason she didn’t answer him before was that she didn’t want him ordering for her. Mostly because she didn’t want to know if he still remembered how she took her coffee.

Even something as trivial as that would surely fuck with her in ways she didn’t want to deal with.

The public setting was her idea, as she wanted to make this as painless as possible, and being around other people would at least give them a reason not to outright scream at one another. She had shown up at his apartment, expecting him to have already taken off, but to her surprise, for once in his worthless life, it didn’t look like Neal was getting ready to run. The apartment looked just as it had the day before, and it actually took her back for a moment. Usually when things got too difficult, he wasted no time packing up his things to move onto someplace new.

Neal had suggested they go to a neighborhood bar down the street once he realized Emma had no intention of talking in his apartment, and Jesus, it took every bit of strength inside of her to say no to that. Being drunk would have made this so much easier, but Emma’s list of screw ups was already a mile long, and she didn’t need to make it any longer. 

Besides, she didn’t want to know what Regina would do if she came back to the motel room drunk. Emma knew that there was only so many times that she would pick her up when she fell, and Emma didn’t want to reach the point where she no longer would, because without Regina’s help, she didn’t feel like she stood a chance.

God, it was so fucked up though, wasn’t it? Emma started drinking to run away from Regina, yet in the end, all it did was practically make her dependent on her. Talk about irony.

When the waitress left with their orders, Emma slouched back down in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared at the man across from her. “So,” she began, getting right down to business, “This is how this is gonna work.”

“Emma,” Neal cut her off, shifting in his chair in some vain attempt at feeling some semblance of comfort during this conversation. “Can you just hear me out… please?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Emma told him shortly. “Because you know what? I really don’t _care_ that you actually thought – by what I can only assume was brought about by massive _brain damage_ , by the way – that getting me thrown into prison at eighteen years old was what was best for me. Okay? I don’t, because it doesn’t change the fact that it happened; that _I_ had to live with your stupid decision brought about by your selfishness and lack of fucking judgment. What you did to me fucked up my life, Neal.”

“Emma, I’m… I know that it probably doesn’t make a difference, but I really am sorry. Okay?” He looked at her imploringly, but Emma’s features did not soften. “I hated doing to that you, and I’ve regretted it every day since. I loved you—”

“ _No!_ ” Emma shouted, slamming her hand on the table. The commotion caused a few heads to turn in their direction, and Emma forced herself to calm down so she didn’t cause a scene. Lowering her voice, she reiterated, “No, don’t you _dare_ tell me that you loved me. You don’t do something like that to someone you love.”

Neal took a breath, trying not to argue with her about it, as he could plainly see that fighting against Emma’s assumption would be pointless. She didn’t want to hear it right now, even if it was true.

After a moment, he looked back at her and asked, “So did you do it? At least tell me that.”

“Did I do _what?_ ”

“Be the Savior that August believed you were,” Neal responded, like she should have known what he was referring to. “Save a cursed town of fairytale characters.”

The waitress chose to come back with their coffees then, and after they both had thanked her, Neal turned towards her expectantly. “Well?”

Emma exhaled a long breath, her fingers drumming on the side of the ceramic cup. “They have their memories back,” she admitted after a moment. “So I guess so.” The truth was, because the curse didn’t break _right,_ the answer to that was probably ‘no’, but she didn’t want to admit her shortcomings to him. Neal didn’t deserve to know her weaknesses; not anymore.

Neal looked like he was about to say something, but then thought better of it. Which Emma was glad for, because if he started spewing bullshit like ‘well then maybe it was worth it’, she might have actually jumped clear across the table and fucking _strangled_ him. It took a few seconds, but Neal nodded his head and asked, “She one of them? That… woman you brought with you?”

“Henry’s _mother?_ ” Emma responded, driving the point home that him leaving her had fucked up their chance of ever raising the kid together like an actual, proper family. Neal cringed at the word as he took a sip of his coffee, but Emma didn’t get a chance to enjoy him feeling like shit about that because something suddenly felt strange. She sat up straighter in her chair. “Wait, you don’t know who she is?”

“Renee?”

“ _Regina,_ ” Emma corrected, looking at him strangely. “I thought you were from there, how the fuck do you not know who the Evil Queen is?”

“The evil _what_ now?” Neal asked, a horrified expression crossing his face as he leaned across the table. “What the fu—our _son_ is being raised by someone who has ‘evil’ in their goddamn title? Are you—Jesus, Emma, are you _high?_ How can you just leave him with—”

“Oh, relax,” Emma spat at him furiously, cutting him off. “She’s a good mother, and she’s not—she isn’t like that anymore, alright? And even if she was, it isn’t like you have any say in how Henry’s raised. Hell _I_ barely have any say in it, and I’m the one who’s—” But she cut herself off, realizing at the last moment that she didn’t want to reveal that part of her life to him.

“You’re the one who’s _what?_ ”

“Nevermind,” Emma snapped. “It’s none of your business. Regina’s just—she’s _fine,_ okay, so just leave it. She might have fucked up a lot in her life, but she did more than right by our kid. If anything, I have to give her that, and considering you haven’t been around for Henry at _all,_ you don’t really have a place to judge on what makes a proper parent.”

Neal still looked pissed, but he didn’t push the issue. Emma had no doubt that it’d be brought up later though, but for now Emma bypassed it and reiterated, “And again I’m going to ask you why the hell you don’t know about her if you’re from there. Because _everyone_ knew who she was, Neal. Trust me; she was pretty damn infamous.”

Neal shifted in his seat, his discomfort overriding his anger for a second as he avoided eye contact. 

“ _Neal,_ ” Emma repeated strongly, still able to recognize when he was hiding something from her. “What the hell aren’t you telling me?”

The man cupped the back of his neck as he slid a little further into his chair, exhaling a long breath before finally turning to look at her. “Alright, look, I know how this is gonna sound, but… don’t freak out on me, alright? We’re in public.”

Emma didn’t like the sound of that at all, but she demanded, “Just _say_ it.”

Neal sighed, relenting to her questions as he admitted, “I might be… a little bit older than I look.” 

Emma narrowed her eyes. While Regina was older than she looked, there was something about the way Neal was acting that made it seem like it might not just be by a handful of decades. “ _How_ much older, exactly?”

Neal coughed and looked away again as he mumbled, “Like a couple hundred years…”

Emma’s eyes nearly bugged out of her skull.

Not wanting Emma to start shouting at him, Neal quickly turned and tried to explain. “Look, it’s… I fell through a portal, yeah, but it—the first one didn’t take me here. Well, it _did_ , I just… didn’t stay in this world long. At the time I was, uh, at this girl’s house, you know? And after she caught me trying to steal some food, this shadow thing came through her window and kind of… well, anyway, I eventually got stuck in this place called ‘Neverland’ and there you can’t actually age, and—it’s kind of a long story.”

Emma just stared at him, trying to process that. She barely even blinked, and Neal started to look more uncomfortable the longer the silence went on. “Uh… Emma?”

The sound of her own name seemed to snap Emma out of it. “You—fuck,” the blonde laughed, because in the end, what the hell else was she supposed to do? This was all so insane. “Right, why _wouldn’t_ you land in Neverland? Why wouldn’t _that_ be real too, right? Fucking hell…” Reaching for her coffee, Emma practically downed the contents of the cup like it was a shot.

It was all so completely ridiculous, and yet this was her life now. Go figure.

“You know, sometimes I feel like I’m in some badly written TV show,” Emma grumbled beneath her breath, slamming her empty cup back down on the table. Neal looked like he was about to say something, but Emma continued angrily with, “I mean, what the _hell_ are the chances that, out of everyone on the planet, I hook up with a guy that’s from the same backwards ass world that I’m from? It’s like one in… I don’t know, fucking _a lot,_ right? How is this—I mean, how the hell is this even _real_ right now?”

Neal opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, Emma pointed at him furiously, “And I swear to god, if you say even _one thing_ about ‘destiny’, I might actually shove this coffee cup down your esophagus.”

Neal closed his mouth, then sighed heavily.

“Look, I don’t know how we ended up together; whether it was… _orchestrated_ , or whatever, or if it was just pure dumb luck. But I swear to God, Emma, I had no idea who you were when we met.”

Emma wished that made her feel better, but it didn’t. She felt like her life wasn’t her own; that she was just some toy to be played with by whoever or _whatever_ did that sort of thing. Everything in her life just seemed too carefully mapped out for any of it to be based on her own decisions, and she hated that. It was all just so conveniently interwoven that it was hard to think anything but anymore.

The blonde sighed heavily, sitting up straighter in her chair as she tried not to think about that right now. “Look it… it doesn’t matter,” she told him. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Yeah,” Neal exhaled heavily, folding his arms across his chest as they got back to the conversation that he clearly did not want to have. “I know. But Emma, my father—”

“Wants you home.”

“And I’m supposed to care about that?” Neal countered. “Emma, I don’t have contact with my father for a reason, alright? He fucked me. He chose magic over me, and you know what? I learned to live with his decision, so he probably should to. I don’t owe my father a _damn_ thing and I sure as hell am not about to go back to the man who abandoned me when I was just a little kid. So I’m sorry, but you can just tell him—”

“No, you don’t _get_ it,” Emma told him strongly, leaning forward in her seat to get his attention. “You don’t have a choice in the matter. Regina and I need to get back to our son, and right now, Gold is the only way to do that.”

Neal furrowed his brow. “Who the hell is Gold?”

“Rumpelstil—your _father_ ,” Emma impatiently corrected herself halfway through. “Gold was the name he went by when he was cursed and—you know what, it doesn’t matter, okay? Look, I get that this is gonna suck for you, but you’re our ticket back to Henry and there’s no way I’m leaving here without you. And _believe_ me, you don’t want to make me force you.”

“What do you mean he’s your only way back to Henry?” Neal asked, starting to grow angry. “Did my father do something to him? Because I swear—”

“No, he—ugh,” Emma breathed in frustration. “It’s just… I owed him a favor, alright? And in the process of cashing that in, I had to leave Henry behind, and we don’t have a way back into Storybrooke right now. Which means my son’s trapped inside, and unless I bring _you_ back, Gold isn’t going to figure out a way to let me back in to get Henry. And I _need_ to get back to him, Neal; that’s not even a question. So just… fucking put your shit with your dad on hold for a minute, and do the first right thing by your son. You can leave straight after you talk to Gold, but just… come back with us for now, okay?”

Neal was silent for a good long while, a conflicted look etched across his expression as he weighed his options. Finally he spoke. “If I… if I come back with you guys, do I get to meet him?”

“Who?”

Neal looked at her like she was being stupid, and it suddenly clicked in Emma’s head.

“Oh.” _Henry._ Who else? Emma shifted in her seat. “I don’t… know if that’s the best idea.” 

The bitter part of her wanted to tell him _hell no_ , but for some reason the words didn’t make it out of her mouth. Maybe it was because Emma had spent most of her life wondering who her parents were – if they missed her, if they _cared_ – to not want to do that to Henry. Maybe Neal didn’t deserve to meet him, but Henry probably did. Still, in the end, it wasn’t her call to make; and she was glad for it, because she didn’t want to make this decision.

“He’s my _son,_ Emma,” Neal reminded her. “Even if I never get to raise him, or even be in his life in any kind of significant way, I think Henry deserves to know who I am, don’t you?”

No. _Yes,_ obviously. Fuck this.

“Look, it’s not my call,” Emma told him, trying to get him off the subject. “I’d have to run it by Regina, and she’s not exactly your biggest fan.”

“Why? What the hell did I ever do to her?”

“It’s what you did to _me,_ moron.”

“Why the hell is that relevant to anything to do with—” Neal started, but then it seemed to dawn on him as his expression dropped so suddenly it would have been almost comedic, if not for how uncomfortable it suddenly made Emma feel. “ _Oh._ ”

“Whatever you’re probably thinking right now, I can guarantee you’re wrong,” Emma told him, because despite her knowing that Neal had gotten the general idea, there was no _way_ he’d guess that Regina was her True Love, and all the complicated bullshit that went along with it. So it wasn’t technically a lie.

“So you’re _not_ dating our son’s adoptive mother then?” Neal asked, like he knew better. After all, it wasn’t as though this assumption was coming out of left field; he had known years ago that Emma’s sexuality wasn’t exactly a straight line. He had even benefited from that little fact once.

“No.”

Because she wasn’t. Not anymore.

“Look it’s—even if I was, it’s not any of your fucking business, alright?” Emma snapped before Neal could retort. “The only thing you need to be concerned about, as far as Regina goes, is that she’s the one who raised our son; who makes all of the decisions regarding his wellbeing. Henry is legally hers, so _yes_ I need to ask her if it’s okay if you meet him.”

“But she listens to your opinions, right?” Neal countered, his gaze far too intrusive for Emma’s liking. It was like he was trying to dissect her. “I mean, she came with you to find me, even though she didn’t have to. You must mean something to her.”

“No, she—ugh, her being here right now is way more complicated than that, alright?” Emma shot back, because with Regina being kicked out of Storybrooke and Emma drinking herself to an early grave, that was probably the vaguest way to cover it. “And _again_ , none of your business. So just accept the fact that I need to ask her, and wait for a goddamn answer, alright?”

“Fine,” Neal relented, the word being followed by an aggravated sigh. “But those are my terms, Emma; you want me to come back with you, then I want to meet Henry. If not…”

“Don’t give me a fucking ultimatum, Neal,” Emma responded heatedly. “I can bring you back with or without your compliance.”

Neal raised a challenging eyebrow at her, the look almost furiously mocking. “You’d have to find me first, and you _know_ how well I disappear.”

A sarcastic smirk crept across Emma’s face in response, and she shot back with, “Well then, I guess it’s good that Regina and I can use magic to find you then, isn’t it? I mean seriously, how the hell did you think we found you in the first place? _Luck?_ You didn’t exactly have a paper trail to follow, Neal.”

“You’re using—?!” Neal began, looking furious before held up his hand to her. “You know what? I don’t even wanna know how you managed to do that here. And if you want to fuck around with that stuff, it’s your funeral. But three hundred years of being alive hasn’t taught me nothing, Emma, and if you wanna take your chances, then go right the hell ahead; but I guarantee you, I can and _will_ find a way to disappear so even magic can’t find me, if it comes to it. Do not fucking sit here and threaten me.”

Emma tried to call his bluff, but Neal showed no indication of lying about that, and it actually gave her pause. Did she really want to take that chance? Probably not, and that aggravated the hell out of her as she quickly stood from her seat.

“Fine,” she responded heatedly. “Whatever, alright? Just lemme ask Regina, and I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

Neal noticeably relaxed as he let out a relieved breath, glad that his request was at least being taken into consideration. “Thank you.”

Emma scoffed, still furious that she was practically being backed into a corner, and as she walked away from the table she shot back with, “Don’t thank me yet.”

Because getting Regina to actually agree? That was gonna be really damn difficult.

**TBC…**


	20. Choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you guys know, I have some personal fuckery going on right now that’s been making me unable to focus on, well, practically anything enjoyable. Those of you who follow my tumblr are probably already aware, but as I had to delete those posts for my personal safety, I’m going to ask that you don’t mention anything about it in the reviews. I’m just unsure right now when I’ll have the concentration to sit down and write, therefore idk when the next chapter will be out. It could still be on a time, but just in case it’s not, I wanted to let you all know that it’s not because I’m slacking off; I just have other things on my mind at the moment.

**CHAPTER TWENTY  
Choices**

“No. Absolutely not.”

Emma exhaled a tired sigh as she leaned against the wall of their motel room. She knew this conversation wasn’t going to go well. “Regina…”

“How can you even be _considering_ this?” Regina raged, pacing back and forth as she glared angrily at the woman on the far side of the room. She was gesturing erratically, her hands seemingly having more to say than her words. Or maybe it was just to keep them occupied so she didn’t storm over to Emma and literally _slap_ some much needed sense into the blonde; by the look on Regina’s face, it seemed as though right then she would have liked nothing but.

“Because—”

But Regina wouldn’t let Emma get out her explanation. “That man ran out on you; left you pregnant and in _prison,_ and you think he actually has the capability of not disappointing our son? If Henry meets him, you _know_ that he will want to see more of his father, Emma. There’s no way around that.” Emma opened her mouth to speak, but Regina continued on her tirade, her gaze towards her angry and filled with blame. “And what if that bastard decides that fatherhood is too much of a responsibility? Do you even understand how damaging that could be to Henry? To give him something like that, only to have it ripped away again? I won’t allow you to do that to him!”

“Look, do you really think that this is my first choice?!” Emma exclaimed, throwing out her hands in frustration. She didn’t like that Regina was blaming her for this when it wasn’t her goddamn fault. “I told Henry that his father _died,_ Regina. Do you understand that? I fucking told him that Neal was a firefighter and that he died a hero. How the hell do you think the kid’s gonna feel towards me when he finds out I lied?”

Regina looked at her incredulously. “Why the hell would you tell him something like that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Emma shot back sarcastically. “Maybe because it had a better ring to it than ‘your worthless thief of a father left me to take the fall for his crime and left me to rot in prison’? Come on, Regina, he was _asking._ What the hell was I supposed to tell him?”

Regina didn’t seem to have an answer to that and it frustrated her. Running her fingers through her hair, she exhaled an aggravated sigh and snapped, “You shouldn’t have lied to him! It’s going to make everything that much more complicated.”

“Hey, it’s not like you’ve been the picture-perfect image of truth to the kid either, you know,” Emma responded pointedly. “So don’t get onto me about doing what I thought was best for him. You do the same damn thing, Regina.”

Regina shook her head. “No, I don’t _care_ , Emma. He is not meeting Henry; that’s completely out of the question.”

“Well that’s the only way he says he’ll come back with us,” Emma reminded the brunette, trying to not let frustration overwhelm her as she pushed herself off the wall. “And considering the guy has apparently hundreds of years of magical knowledge on us, I don’t really want to take the chance that he could actually disappear, do _you?_ Because without him, Gold won’t help us get back to Storybrooke. I’m not running that risk.”

“We don’t need _Gold,_ ” Regina seethed. “We have access to magic; I’m sure we could figure it out eventually.”

“And how long do you think ‘eventually’ is going to take?” Emma countered. “Despite you being the one to cast it, Gold knows more about the curse than we do. You don’t even know how the damn thing shrouds the town, Regina; how do you expect to get through it if you don’t even know what’s hiding it?”

“And you think _Gold_ knows?” Regina shot back. “He could be in the dark as much as I am, Emma. We don’t know if we can rely on him.” Running her hand through her hair in frustration, Regina’s blame overrode all else as she suddenly and harshly informed her, “It was foolish of you to even embark on this little adventure in the first place; only _idiots_ indebt themselves to Rumpelstiltskin.”

“Well, fine, thanks for your assessment,” Emma snapped, sitting heavily on the bed and grabbing one of the pillows before practically catapulting it across the room. “Fuck. I just… can you _not?_ There’s no use bitching at me over something that already happened; I screwed up, okay? I get that. Irresponsible Emma strikes again, _whatever_. But can we just focus on how to _fix_ it instead of standing here yelling like it’ll actually make some kind of goddamn difference?”

Regina just folded her arms across her chest, glaring at the blonde from the other side of the room. Emma sighed heavily.

“Look, he… Gold created the curse, didn’t he? So he must know how it works. And I have to… I gotta believe that he can figure out a way back for us, okay? Because otherwise we’re probably fucked.”

Regina side glanced her, but said nothing for a long moment, trying to calm herself down. It took a little bit, but eventually she reminded her, “Magic is still unstable in Storybrooke. Even if Gold does figure out a way for us to get back, he will have no way of casting it. In the end, dear, this is on us.”

“Then maybe he can figure out a way for us to do it,” Emma responded, voicing a solution that she had already come to earlier without Regina’s help, knowing that it was probably better to mention it now than have Regina find out way after the fact. The woman really did not like being kept in the dark. “I mean, even if he can’t cast it, _you_ could, right? So we just follow his instructions when he has some.”

Regina shook her head, not even giving that option a chance. “No, _no,_ ” she told her strongly, suddenly looking fiercely protective for reason’s Emma didn’t understand. “For that to happen, Gold will have to be aware that I can syphon magic from you in the outside world. Do you even understand how dangerous that could be for you? You’ll become the Holy Grail for those wishing to reclaim their power, and I _won’t_ put your wellbeing at risk like that!”

_Oh._ Shit.

Emma chewed on her bottom lip as she looked away from her, saying absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, that seemed to voice more than words could, and Emma braced herself for the backlash that was sure to come from her thoughtless decision making.

Regina turned towards her, horror washing over her face as she realized Emma’s pointed silence could only mean one thing. “Oh God,” she breathed. “What the hell have you done…?”

Emma shifted from her position on the bed, feeling terribly uncomfortable because of this newfound wave of guilt that washed over her. Rubbing the back of her neck, Emma chanced glancing at Regina, and the look on her face cut through her. She looked so goddamn _frightened_ on her behalf that it made Emma feel like absolute shit.

“I… might have told Mary Margaret,” she hesitantly admitted. “That’s… kinda why we were arguing on the phone; she doesn’t trust you being able to control magic again. She says all it’s done is allow you to hurt people, even though I _told_ her that we found out because you healed me when I was sick.”

“Why…?” Regina asked softly, before she allowed her anger to take over again and she suddenly snapped, furiously pushing over one of the end tables as she swore loudly, “ _Fuck,_ Emma!”

Emma noticeably started at the exclamation; it wasn’t often that Regina swore, and when she did, it was always to accent a furious sentence, not just to scream out her frustration as she took out her anger on unsuspecting furniture. Regina almost seemed like a normal person then, not this regal political figure that she had always come off as, and god, it was _strange._

But Emma didn’t really have a chance to respond, as Regina whipped around to face her. “How could you be so utterly inept?! I _told_ you what would happen if people found out, and yet you thoughtlessly spewed this information to your mother like it was completely inconsequential? Do you have no _sense?!_ ”

“Well she asked how we found Baelfire!” Emma tried to defend, although the more she tried to rationalize it, the less sense it even made. Regina was right; she _had_ warned her about this before, but Emma hadn’t taken it seriously. She had thought Regina was just overreacting, but maybe she really wasn’t. And that… was _so_ not good.

Emma had really fucked up this time.

“She knew we weren’t close before, and yet all of a sudden we found him?” Emma exclaimed, still trying to defend herself even though she knew it was probably pointless. “Come on, what the hell else was I supposed to say? Besides, she was telling me that Gold wasn’t having any luck with magic, so I thought maybe _us_ having access to it could help. I was trying to get us back to our kid, Regina; don’t fault me for that!”

“You…” Regina started, looking like she was about two seconds away from throttling Emma for her lack of judgment. “You _told_ Snow to speak to him about it? _Are you out of your mind?!_ That man is power hungry, and you just handed him a goddamn feast on a platter! Do you really believe that he’ll just leave you be once we find a way back? He’s going to use you for his own gain, and once word gets out of your power, everyone else who lost _theirs_ will be lining up to try to take you from him!” Regina’s hand connected with the desk chair, knocking it to the ground as she exclaimed angrily, “You thoughtless _imbecile;_ I can’t believe you would be so stupid!”

“I’m _sorry,_ okay?” Emma exclaimed, not really knowing what to do anymore. She had _thought_ she was making the right decision by allowing Gold to know about their ability to do magic, but she hadn’t really considered what that could mean outside of allowing them to get back to Henry. “I’m sorry, I fucked up; I just… I wanted to give us a chance to get back to Henry. Isn’t that what’s important?”

“Of course that’s what’s important,” Regina snapped, her fingernails scraping the back of her neck as she began to pace again. “But you… _damnit_ , Emma, you have no idea how bad this could get! And I…” She looked over Emma, her helplessness beginning to show beneath her anger as Regina regrettably told her, “I don’t know if I can protect you from that. Do you understand me? I don’t know how, because protecting people isn’t what I _did!_ ”

“Regina…” Emma tried softly, the apology evident in her voice as she picked herself up off the bed to cross the room towards the other woman. She placed her hands on Regina’s arms, making the brunette turn to look at her. Emma needed to… she needed to fix this. Somehow. 

“You don’t… I mean, we don’t know if that’s going to happen yet, alright?” she tried, set on giving the woman ‘what ifs’ to try to dismantle her pessimism. “Maybe Gold won’t _want_ my magic, maybe he won’t tell anyone. Maybe… maybe in the process of getting back, we actually find a way to break the curse for real this time, and magic no longer becomes inaccessible; or hell, maybe it’ll just disappear all together.”

Tucking a piece of stray hair behind the brunette’s ear, Emma gave her a soft, encouraging smile as she tried to comfort Regina by continuing, “And besides, for all we know, it might only be _you_ that can syphon magic from me. I mean, True Love and all that, right? We’re connected. So don’t… please don’t freak out about this just yet; we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Regina pursed her lips, her arms tightening around her form as her eyes connected with Emma’s. “I don’t want to have to spend the rest of my life afraid that someone is going to take you from me, from Henry…”

“You _won’t,_ ” Emma promised, even though she knew it wasn’t exactly within her power to do so. But still, she didn’t want Regina freaking out about this when they didn’t even know right now if it was warranted. “Trust me, Regina, I spent a hell of a long time looking for my family; do you really think I’m going to allow _anyone_ to take me from it?”

Regina exhaled a defeated breath and shifted her gaze away from the woman in front of her. Something Emma had said had clearly hit a sore spot, and distress etched across her face as she said softly, “I really wish you would stop referring to us as family. We’re not married; we’re not even together anymore. I don’t understand how you could possibly think that, whilst continuing to reject the idea of us ever being together again.”

Emma’s heart clenched in her chest, Regina’s words both surprising her and bringing her a pain she hadn’t really expected at the woman’s rejection of the term. Her hands fell from Regina’s arms, lying uselessly at her sides as she stared at her, unable to really form a response. That had hurt her, and Emma didn’t really even know _why._ Because Regina was right, wasn’t she? It didn’t make any sense.

And yet she couldn’t help feeling that Regina and Henry… they were the family she had always been looking for. Yes, she found family in her parents, but that wasn’t where she belonged anymore. She didn’t need to be raised by them; it was her time to find and create a family of her own, and they… they were it, weren’t they? Emma may have had a hard time accepting that to the point of allowing it to become an actual reality, but that didn’t mean that it was any less true.

“You don’t… feel like we are?” Emma asked her hesitantly, trying to keep the upset from her voice but failing miserably. Her broken tone caused Regina to look at her, and her face to soften at the wounded look she was confronted with.

“I merely… fail to see the logic behind it, Emma. That’s all. And when you… when you say things like that, it hurts more than if you never considered me that at all, because you’re saying one thing, and doing another.”

“I…” Emma tried, but found she had no words. What could she say in her defense? Regina was right. It was probably a horrible thing to say to her, considering Regina really _did_ want them to be a family. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Emma did too. She wanted all the bullshit to not matter and just be where she _belonged,_ but it wasn’t that simple. Still, she couldn’t help how she felt inside, and despite everything, Regina and Henry felt like the closest thing to family that she ever had.

“I’m sorry,” Emma apologized softly, unable to look Regina in the eye. She felt like such an idiot, and the hurt that consumed her over this wouldn’t allow her to just act like she was okay. Because she wasn’t. And it was so fucked up, because she hadn’t expected that such a simple term would actually affect her that badly. The emotion felt like it came out of nowhere, and Emma didn’t really know how to handle it, or what it even meant. “I shouldn’t have—I wasn’t thinking. I won’t say it again.”

Emma heard Regina release a hesitant breath, before fingers were touching her chin and forcing her to look back at the woman in front of her. “Don’t ever apologize for how you feel,” she quietly responded, her eyes searching Emma’s for an answer that the blonde couldn’t give her. “Just don’t… please don’t hurt me with it.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Emma breathed, wishing that for once, she didn’t feel like she was falling when she looked into Regina’s eyes. It was disorienting in a relationship already filled with chaos. Regina’s hold on her chin loosened, her fingers beginning to gently caress the porcelain of her cheek, and it was then that Emma realized just how close the other woman was to her.

Regina gave her a small, sad smile as she brushed the hair from Emma’s eyes, her fingertips then trailing down the contour of her cheek bone. Emma could do nothing but stand there, entranced in a feeling that had been lost to her for a long time. There was something… _different_ about the way Regina was looking at her, was touching her right then. It was simplistic. It wasn’t in desperation, in comfort, or in an attempt to satisfy Emma’s demons with sexuality. It didn’t even really seem like it was about her at all. Regina looked trapped in a moment, and Emma wished she could read minds, because there was a part of her that ached to be in that moment with her.

Because despite how saddened Regina looked by it, she looked at Emma as though she still found the beauty within it, within _her._

“What?” Emma asked, her tone barely above a whisper. She didn’t want to disrupt whatever this was.

The fullness of Regina’s palm pressed against her cheek, the sensation warm and comforting as she gently told her, “I wish I knew how to let you go…”

Emma’s brow furrowed, not expecting _that_ in the slightest. “You… what?”

But Regina just gave her another small, saddened smile as she told her, “You cannot help the family you’re born to, but when you’re older… that’s when you get to choose your own family. And…” Regina took a breath, her hand falling from Emma’s cheek to her neck as she told her, “because of how we’re bound to one other, I know that you didn’t get choose me, just as much as I didn’t get to choose you. But I want that. I _want_ you to choose me, Emma; I want us to choose each other. Because neither of us have ever really had the freedom to do something like that, to just… decide for ourselves what it is we wanted in life.”

Emma felt her breath leave her, because that was it. _That_ was it exactly; the reason she hated all this, the reason she fought so hard against her feelings for Regina. She couldn’t be sure that they were what she wanted, because True Love didn’t really give her a choice. And it took her aback, to know that Regina felt the same way, because the woman had tried so hard to prove that she was different so that they could be together again. But Regina spent her entire life having other people make her choices for her, that a part of her probably just expected that that was the way it would always be. 

But Regina didn’t want that, because she knew that a choice that wasn’t one’s own was meaningless. And that was how Emma felt about her whole life lately; her relationship, her past, being the Savior… nothing felt like a choice, but merely a path she had to go down that had no intersecting roads, no means for an escape. She would just walk from here to there, and that would be her life. That was it; she was just some puppet on strings that only danced when someone or something else willed her to do so.

And in that moment, Emma finally realized what Regina saw when she looked at her; a reflection. Emma was the person trapped on the other side of Regina’s mirror, and there was something really beautifully fucked up in that revelation, because despite how badly Regina wished to free Emma from her confines, she couldn’t even save herself. So she pressed against the glass and willed it to be gone, so maybe this time when they touched each other it would be because they wished to, and not due to them helplessly mimicking the other’s actions as they did what reflections were expected to.

Emma wanted to shatter it.

Regina’s hand fell from her skin as she exhaled a helpless sigh, but Emma quickly grabbed it in her own and forced the woman to touch her again in some wave of desperation. “So _take it,_ ” she told her fiercely, this plan coming together in her mind that probably didn’t have any basis, and yet she grasped for it anyway.

“What?” Regina whispered, perplexion etching across her face at Emma’s request. She didn’t understand what it was that she was asking.

“Take it from me,” Emma reiterated, probably sounding halfway insane by how desperate that came across. She pressed herself against Regina, wrapping the other woman’s arm around her waist so that this would be easier for her. Emma knew they had to be touching. “I’m made of it, aren’t I? And you can… you can take that, you _have_ taken that; used it. So just take it all, get it out of me, then… I don’t know, expel it from you until it no longer exists. You can do that, can’t you…?”

“Emma, it… it doesn’t work like that,” Regina tried to explain, looking at her sympathetically. “You’re made of True Love, yes, but you’re made from your parents’… not ours. And if I took that from you… I told you before that it would kill you, and I wasn’t exaggerating. It’s the very essence of who you _are_. You are a physical incarnation of their love, and us… we don’t have something like that. We’ve never created life together. What exists between us is quite literally untouchable.”

Emma felt herself deflate despite the fact that she had known it was probably a long shot. Still, helplessness and disappointment washed across her expression, and Regina exhaled a soft sigh as she gently leaned her forehead against hers. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “I should have never said that when I didn’t have a solution to give you. I just… I got caught up in an unrealistic fantasy, and I should have never voiced it out loud.”

Emma closed her eyes, trying to suppress the conflicting feelings in her gut as she asked her, “But do you think if you did…” Fingertips brushed olive skin, and then hands were tangled together as Emma voiced something she found she couldn’t keep inside, “If you had the choice, do you… do you think you still would’ve chosen me…?”

The question was so terribly vulnerable sounding, like for some reason the answer would sum up Emma’s entire self-worth. And it scared her, because outside of being bound to Regina, she didn’t feel as though she was good enough for her. She hadn’t treated her well at all these past couple months, and yet, unfathomably, she reached for an acceptance she didn’t believe she deserved. But then again, after everything that Regina had done while she was the Evil Queen, it was doubtful that she thought she deserved Emma either. And yet she too desired something that a part of her believed she shouldn’t be allowed to have, because touching it was the closest to happy either of them had been for a very long time.

“I’m not answering that,” Regina whispered, her voice suddenly sounding strained with emotion as she tried to pull away from her. But Emma tightened her hold on Regina’s wrist, not allowing her to go just yet.

Emma opened her eyes, and blue eyes caught brown. “…Why?”

Regina’s bottom lip trembled and she bit down, trying to control herself enough to speak. Her eyes were beginning to mist over, the sight of it slowly drilling a hole into Emma’s heart as she watched Regina become overcome with an emotion she didn’t understand. But she wanted to, she _needed_ to know what the hell was making Regina look that way, and so she waited for the explanation that seemed to take an immense amount of self-control for Regina to voice without breaking down completely.

“Because,” she finally breathed, her words soft and broken as she turned away from Emma’s prying gaze. “Because I’m _terrified_ to find out that our answers may not be the same…” A tear slid down Regina’s cheek then, and Emma didn’t think, she just moved.

Grasping her face in her hands, Emma’s thumbs wiped away the remnants of Regina’s distress as she closed the distance between them. The angle was bad, the kiss unexpected by the woman in her arms, and their teeth bumped together as Emma tried to find where she belonged. They moved past it though, seamlessly falling into a routine as easy as breathing once the familiarity found its way back to them. 

Emma pressed herself against her, weaving her fingers in dark hair as Regina allowed her entrance, the small whimper of encouragement quickly becoming muffled by the blonde’s tongue. In all honesty, Emma had no idea what she was doing, but in that moment, she just felt like she had to. Regina’s lack of answer said enough for her to understand, even though, in the end, it might have only been that Regina merely _wished_ that she would still choose her if given the opportunity, and not the certainty that she actually would. Regardless, her desire for it meant something to the woman who, for her entire life, hadn’t been anyone’s first choice of anything.

But Regina had been right to fear voicing it, because their answers wouldn’t have been the same. Not because Emma was sure that she wouldn’t choose Regina, but because she simply didn’t know. It was hard to imagine, this world where she wasn’t bound to the woman in her arms, and Emma had no idea if it would change anything. So what was the point really, of imagining something different? There were too many factors to consider, and in the end, it wouldn’t mean anything because _this_ was their life now. 

There was no choice, there was just them.

“Fuck the answer,” Emma breathed against her lips, hands finding skin as they fell beneath the brunette’s shirt. Regina grasped the bottom of Emma’s tank top and took a step backwards, bringing Emma with her as the blonde told her between heated kisses, “It’s not… not fucking real anyway…”

“And this is?” Regina asked, her breathing becoming uneven as her back found the far wall, encouraging the blonde to press her up against it. Her teeth found Emma’s bottom lip and she nipped lightly at it, pulling it towards her before releasing it and sliding her own hands up Emma’s shirt, exposing her pale skin to the heavy air in the room.

“I don’t know,” Emma admitted, her lips having found their home at the base of Regina’s neck as she breathed out her uncertainty. Sometimes though, this closeness was the only thing that made any goddamn sense to her anymore. “But it’s the closest thing we’ve got right now.”

[x]

Emma’s cell phone rang from the nightstand.

“Fuck, _fuck,_ ” she exclaimed, her breathing uneven as her nails scraped against the headboard. It had jolted her out of the moment, and Regina too, as her fingers stilled inside of her and she looked over at the offending object. Emma grasped onto the back of her neck, forcing Regina to look back at her and come back to the pleasure they were sharing as she pleaded, “Just ignore it… just fucking ignore it…”

“It could be important,” Regina panted, her hand stilled between the blonde’s spread thighs. They had barely begun, but the foreplay had been both long and passionate as they began to strip away everything that defined their relationship. It wasn’t about punishment, distractions, or depression. It just… it just _was,_ and for one goddamn second, Emma just wanted to enjoy having Regina in a way that wasn’t brought about by one of her mental breakdowns.

“ _This_ is important,” Emma told her, her fingertips ghosting across Regina’s cheek, down her neck, before falling to her chest. Her breathing was uneven and every inch of her body felt like it was on fire, and for the first time since the curse broke, she felt like she and Regina might actually be on the same page after all. It was the closest Emma felt to being _okay_ about being bound to the woman that shared her bed, and considering she didn’t know how long that was going to last, Emma didn’t want it to end prematurely. “We need this, Regina; fuck everything else right now. Please.”

Her plea caused Regina’s gaze to shift from the ringing phone, and she worried her bottom lip for a moment before nodding. “Okay,” she relented softly, dipping her head down to place a soft, open mouthed kiss on Emma’s shoulder. “But if it rings again—”

“I’m breaking the fucking phone,” Emma breathed before tangling her fingers in chestnut hair, bringing Regina to her to kiss the distractions from her mind. Rolling her hips, she encouraged the brunette to continue, a breathless gasp becoming silenced by a pair of lips as Regina complied with her request.

It was strange, to feel so connected to someone through their shared inability to have a choice in the matter. In the end, they were probably doing nothing but playing into the preconceived notion that they were meant to be, and should Regina have welcomed the fact that she didn’t get to choose the love of her life, this probably would have never came to be. But she was lost in it just the same as Emma, and because of that, the blonde found solace in the only person who understood how it was that she was feeling in that moment.

Maybe it was nothing but backwards logic, but right then, it was the only thing that felt like it made any sense, and the relatability was a comfort that neither of them knew they needed until they had it.

Regina’s kisses were bruising until the sound of the phone ringing died out to nothing, and she pushed one of Emma’s legs up to situate her body between them. Emma felt a third finger stretch her, and the guttural moan that followed was muffled as Regina began using her hips to push deeper into her. Emma broke the kiss as she grasped for the skin of Regina’s back, her head falling to the woman’s shoulder as she breathed out her praise. “Fuck, fuck… _Regina…_ ”

Regina began to put her entire body into the movement, jolting Emma from beneath her with every thrust of her hips against the back of her hand. Emma grasped for her, trying to find a way to touch her as well, but the angle Regina was at didn’t allow it, and in the end all Emma managed to do was bang her palms against Regina’s back in frustration and desperation, the pleasure causing her to arch her back and close her eyes as she thought ‘screw it,’ allowing herself to just succumb to the feeling Regina was giving her.

They had all night anyway.

Regina’s lips found her neck, her jaw, then laid their rest at the base of Emma’s ear. “Say my name again,” she demanded, the words tickling Emma’s skin and sending a shiver up her spine. Regina didn’t top, and yet right then, there was no question as to who held the power. Emma couldn’t even remember giving it to her, and yet she allowed her to keep it as she complied.

“Regina…” It was a pleading moan as fingernails broke skin, and Emma slammed her hips harder into the brunette’s lithe fingers, knowing and not really caring that Regina’s knuckles were sure to bruise her pelvis. 

“ _Again,_ ” Regina demanded, and it was then that Emma realized that this wasn’t about power; it was about keeping her in the moment. It was about Regina’s fear that perhaps Emma didn’t think about her anymore when they were together, or that Emma distanced herself from it all by separating the woman that she loved from the woman Regina really was when they were together like this. And maybe she had done that before, but Emma didn’t relate as well to the woman she fell in love with; she related to the woman who Regina actually _was._

“I know,” she gasped, turning her head to force Regina away from her ear so she could look at her. Fingertips traced her jaw as Regina continued moving within her, and Emma could finally see the vulnerably etched across the woman’s features. “Regina, I know,” she breathed. “And I’m here, okay? I’m here. Just don’t… don’t stop. Fuck, _please…_ ”

Regina exhaled a shuddered breath, trying to suppress an unwanted emotion as she nodded her understanding. And then her lips were on Emma’s, the blonde beginning to pant against them as Regina moved within her once more, giving the woman beneath her the desperation for pleasure that it seemed, in the end, she wasn’t meant to have.

Because the damn phone was ringing again. This time, however, it was Regina’s.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Emma swore furiously, picking up one of the pillows and chucking it at the wall as Regina stopped. There were only so many times they could get interrupted before it ruined the moment, and already Regina looked like she wanted to answer it.

“It could be Henry…” 

“It fucking _better_ be Henry, because if it’s anyone else I’m gonna punch a freaking hole through Storybrooke’s protective _whatever_ just so I can get through it to strangle them,” Emma snapped, the abrupt change of emotion in the air causing her temper to skyrocket quite suddenly.

Regina shot her a look that clearly implied that she thought Emma was being overdramatic, and okay, she probably was, but it just really sucked to finally _feel_ something that wasn’t born from misery, only to have it ripped away right afterwards. It was just horrible timing, and as Regina shot her an apologetic look and climbed off of her to go answer her cell, she left Emma feeling empty and cold.

She had needed this. She didn’t know why, but she just… she really, really had.

Fisting her hands over her eyes, Emma lay back against the pillows and groaned in aggravation as Regina answered her cellphone. Seemingly without checking first who it was, because after “Hello?” the second thing that came out of her mouth was an impatient, “What the hell do you want?”

That got Emma’s attention and she sat up, shooting Regina a questioning look. The woman did _not_ look happy, but she said nothing as she waited for the person on the other line to explain themselves. A frustrated sigh was released then, and Regina took the phone from her ear before tossing it in Emma’s direction. 

“It’s for you. Apparently some people in this world lack the concept of _patience._ ”

Emma’s brow creased as she caught the phone, and when she looked down at the name on Regina’s screen, her expression darkened. “Can’t this wait?” she snapped as she placed the phone against her ear, furious because of all the people who could have interrupted this, it had to be _him._ His voice alone was a surefire way to kill the mood, and Emma spited him for it.

“Well hello to you too, dearie,” Gold drawled, sounding terribly amused by Emma’s obvious aggravation. “I do hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important, but when you didn’t answer your own phone, I started to get worried.”

Yeah, right.

Regina collapsed heavily onto the bed next to her, her frustration curling off her like smoke as she flicked her hand towards the phone and mouthed, “Speaker.” Emma obliged and pressed the button before throwing the phone down on the mattress.

“Just say what you called to say so we can be done, Gold.”

A chuckle was heard from the other line, and Emma’s hand fisted in the sheets. This was so not what she needed right now. But Gold thankfully stopped his taunting and got down to business as he mentioned, “I heard you found my son.”

“So?”

“So I was wondering when I might expect the both of you back,” Gold responded pointedly. “Because I may have found a solution to our little boundary problem, and should Baelfire not wish to come back, I would _hate_ to keep that information to myself and leave your son trapped in a town that neither of you can reach…”

Emma’s eyes widened at that information, and her gaze caught Regina’s, who’s breathing had shallowed. Both of them had been living with hope that there was actually a way, yet before this, neither of them had any clear path to get back. If what Gold was saying was true, then they didn’t have to play guessing games with magic, and they could get back to Henry within the week. That was… that was _big._

Still, Regina didn’t seem very happy with how it was voiced, and she snapped back with, “Don’t threaten us. If you have a way back, then tell us how we are to go about it; we don’t have time for your mindless little games.”

“First I want a guarantee that Baelfire will be with you when you return,” Gold told them, his tone leaving no room for arguments or bargains. “Because until you can give me that, I don’t exactly have an incentive to help you, now, do I…?”

Emma looked at Regina but said nothing, because in the end, they both knew how they could guarantee Neal’s return… if only Regina could find it within herself to agree to it. The seconds ticked by, and Regina looked like she was fighting an internal battle as she weighed her options. But they both knew that this was their best chance, the most reliable solution, and eventually Regina released a frustrated sigh and snapped, “Fine, you have our word. Now what is it?”

“Well, dearie,” Gold began, the triumphant smile evident in his tone. “Perhaps then it’s time I tell you who exactly it was that I sent _skittering_ over the town line once the curse broke, mmm…?”

**TBC…**


	21. Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I wasn’t able to finish this in time last week so I decided to just skip a whole other week so I could continue to post on Wednesdays, and in that time my muse went _nuts_ and I ending up finishing like three chapters, haha. So now that I’m ahead again, there shouldn’t be any more delays ^_^
> 
> There’s quite a bit of drama in this chapter, but a lot of things are said that really needed to be, and with everything out in the open, it allows them to move forward in a much… uh, _calmer_ way, haha. So I can assure you, some happier times are right around the corner! I can’t guarantee they’ll stay that way of course, but regardless, you guys _will_ get a reprieve from the angst very soon.

**CHAPTER TWENTY ONE  
Truth**

“You sent a fucking _teenage girl—_ ” Emma began slowly, her tone furious and disbelieving before something inside her seemed to snap and suddenly she was screaming, “What the hell is wrong with you?! She had already been separated from her family and you just—!”

“That is _precisely_ why I chose her, Sherriff Swan,” Gold interrupted, his fierce tone floating through the phone’s speaker. Emma looked absolutely livid, her mouth pressed in a tight line. “There was no one to miss her. It was merely a test that needed to be performed; I assure you, dearie, it was nothing personal.”

“Like _that_ makes it any goddamn better…”

“Wait a moment,” Regina interrupted, still feeling terribly confused. Just the mere mention of this girl’s name seemed to allow Emma to know who she was, but Regina was still lagging behind. “Refresh my memory. This girl was—?”

“Seriously?” Emma asked, rounding on her in disbelief. “You curse every fairytale in existence and you don’t even bother to learn who the hell you even sent here? Actually, no— more than that, you come to this world and you don’t even watch any of the classics like _The Wizard of Oz?_ Jesus, Regina; you really need to sort out your priorities.”

“How on earth can you consider that ‘more than that’?” Regina countered exasperatedly, believing that it was perhaps Emma who needed to sort out _hers_. “And do not sit here and lecture me about how I dealt with the curse, because I assure you, dear, I tried to familiarize myself with _everyone_ in my town. It is hardly my fault that I cannot specifically remember every single one.”

“Come on, Regina; Dorothy _Gale?_ ” Emma stressed, trying to jump start her memory. “Girl from Kansas who’s house gets swept up in a tornado? It ends up landing in Oz and squashes the Wicked Witch of the West’s sister—”

“Wait, are you talking about _Elphaba?_ ” 

“Yes!” Emma exclaimed, sounding exasperated that it took Regina this long. But then she blinked, since that had seemed to elicit more memory than anything else. “Wait, did you know her or something?”

Regina waved her off and exhaled an irritated sigh. “The woman tried to enlist my help after a foreigner stole something from her, but believe me, I had much greater concerns to deal with than chasing a child all over creation on someone else’s behest.” A small shrug followed that as she continued, “Besides, she had nothing to offer me in return but a favor, and she isn’t the most competent witch I’ve ever met. There was no foreseeable gain in it for me.”

“Well aren’t you a peach,” Emma responded dryly. Regina bit back a sigh, not wanting to get into the politics of the Enchanted Forest and its neighboring realms right now; they had much more important things to discuss.

“Wait a minute,” Emma said suddenly, her head snapping back towards the phone as something dawned on her. “Didn’t Dorothy have friends; the scarecrow and the rest? Why aren’t they looking for her?”

“How is that even relevant right now?” Regina questioned, looking at Emma like she didn’t even know where this line of questioning was coming from. While she wasn’t too thrilled with Gold’s treatment of the child either, there was a point to be made, and Regina would rather it come soon so that they didn’t have to continue speaking to him. He had already ruined the mood, and Regina could see that Emma’s entire body was tense with aggravation, seemingly for more reasons than one now. “What _I’m_ more concerned with, is what this child has to do with us getting back home. What does she possess that we do not?”

“Her _slippers_ , dearie,” Gold informed them, and Emma looked as though she might slap herself for not putting two and two together sooner as her jaw dropped in realization. “And to answer your question, Sherriff, it seems as though her friends believed that since she did not belong to their world, that she merely returned to her own once the curse was cast. How fortunate for all of us that they were wrong, hmm?”

Regina wasn’t surprised by his answer; Gold would have, of course, covered all of his bases before acting. If he was good at one thing, it was getting what he wanted with no one being the wiser.

Emma side-glanced the phone. She still looked furious on Dorothy’s behalf, if not growing even more so with each passing minute. “You’re still a dick, Gold. She’s just a _kid,_ and you threw her out on her ass in a world that’s like seventy plus years into her future. I mean, that’s gotta be one hell of a mindfuck, and you really don’t even _care_ about that, do you?”

“No, dearie; I believe it’s safe to say that I do not,” Gold informed her, his uncaring tone filtering through the phone’s speaker. “Now, if we could get back down to business…?”

Emma’s anger radiated off her in waves, and in an effort to calm herself down so she could focus, she pushed herself off the bed – away from the phone, away from the person who was infuriating her – and began to pace. Regina watched her for a moment, her brow slightly furrowed as she tried to understand why a stranger’s fate held so much meaning to her. It wasn’t as though Regina was alright with how Gold had treated the child either, but there was no use getting upset over what had already been done, especially when it provided them with such a gain.

And perhaps that was terrible, but Regina would always put Henry above everyone else. It didn’t matter if said person were a child or adult; her son would _always_ come first. And right now, there was a small part Regina that was thankful Gold did what he did, for despite it being awful for the young girl caught in the middle of it all, the situation had provided them with a path back to their son. That had to count for something.

“Speak then, if you’re so inclined to steer this conversation back on course,” Regina snapped impatiently to him as she rose from her seat on the mattress, picking up Emma’s t-shirt from off the ground and wordlessly holding it out to the woman. It was obvious they wouldn’t be picking up where they left off, and Emma looked slightly awkward in her nude stature of rage. Regina figured she would just be more comfortable in dealing with everything, should they be clothed.

But when Emma’s eyes caught hers, there was more behind her gaze than just surprise at the sudden offer. There was vulnerability behind them, hidden deep behind just the slightest flicker of disappointment. But then a wall formed before Regina’s eyes, hardening Emma’s gaze back to the rage she felt towards Gold, and in an instant the article of clothing was taken from her grasp. The blonde stepped away from her then to redress herself, and Regina felt something stir in her gut that she didn’t want to analyze, as they didn’t have the time right now.

As Regina started gathering her own clothes from off the floor, Gold continued, “What that child possesses is one of the most powerful magical objects I have ever come across. Those slippers allow one to walk through realms, even time itself. And while magic lies dormant throughout most of this world, should Snow White’s claim be true, you both should find no trouble tapping into their power so that you may return. So, unless someone’s been lying to me…”

Regina’s spine prickled with contempt as she clasped her bra. She could hear the baiting tone in Gold’s voice, and she didn’t approve of it one bit. Regina wasn’t foolish enough to confirm Snow’s claim as truth, but she wasn’t foolish enough to believe Gold would believe her if she denied it either. Instead, she opted to go with, “If these slippers are as powerful as you say, why on earth did you allow them out of your sight in the first place?”

The question was challenging, as she knew Gold, and the last thing he would let go of was power. Not unless there was some gain for him in doing so.

The man chuckled. “Is it so farfetched that I gave her something familiar out of _kindness_ , Your Majesty?”

But it wasn’t Regina who answered, it was Emma. “ _Yeah,_ ” she stressed, tone still biting as she roughly threw her shirt over her head. “So just cut the crap and tell us why you needed them out of town.”

“Precautionary measures,” Gold answered vaguely, which didn’t surprise Regina in the slightest. He wasn’t exactly one to share his business. “It was hardly the first I’ve taken, and it won’t be the last. But, as such, I happen to be aware of _exactly_ where they are now, should the time have ever arose when I was in need of them again.”

“What the fuck did you do, put some kind of tracker on them?” Emma accused, nearly tripping over her jeans as she hurriedly stepped into them. Regina’s hand instinctively reached out to steady the woman, but Emma barely spared her a glace, still glaring at the phone. “On _her?_ ”

“I merely made certain that she would be found by the right people once she left our lovely little homestead,” Gold told her, the smirk evident in his tone. He knew he was getting to Emma, and he cared nothing of reeling it back in. “And found she was, by a gentleman named Officer Rodwell, I believe, who sent her off to the Department of Health and Human Services in Augusta, where as far as I am aware, she has resided ever since.” 

Emma looked like she was about to break something, and finally it clicked. Regina didn’t know how she hadn’t put two and two together before this, but now she felt utterly foolish for not realizing why this was such a sore spot for Emma sooner. The woman was fostered nearly all of her childhood, a runaway at such a young age, left to survive in a world that sought to take advantage of her youth and perceived innocence, and although they never spoke explicitly on the subject, Regina knew that couldn’t have been easy for her. In fact, she was fairly certain it was very, very far from it.

“Emma…” Regina tried softly, placing a hand on the blonde’s shoulder to try to show her that she, at the very least, understood what it was that was bothering her now. But Emma clearly did not wish to be coddled right then, and she brushed Regina off and took a step back, holding out her hands to ward her away as she shook her head.

“Just… do me a favor and deal with the rest of this shit, okay?” It was a rhetorical question however, as Emma was already buttoning up her jeans and on her way to the door. She needed space, and although Regina understood that, she wished that for once, Emma might trust her enough to share how she was feeling. “I gotta—I should tell Neal we’re heading out soon. I’ll be back.”

And then she was gone, the door shut firmly behind her as Emma retreated away from harsh reminders of her own past, and the current reminder that despite that part of her life being over, it didn’t mean that others wouldn’t fall victim to the same terrible routines. 

The amused nature of Gold’s question was evident when he asked, “Something I said…?”

And God, Regina couldn’t _wait_ until karma finally came around for a piece of the smug bastard; she just wished it would be sooner, rather than later.

[x]

When Emma returned a few hours later, Regina was sitting at the small desk in the corner of the room, her lips pursed into a tight line as she stared at the screen of her laptop. She had made their flight arrangements quite a while ago, but she had been so caught up in her own thoughts that she hadn’t clicked from the confirmation page yet. She just sat there, consumed with what Gold had casually revealed after Emma left, and hearing the woman return immediately made every muscle in Regina’s body tense from the unpleasant conversation that was sure to follow.

“When were you going to tell me?”

The question hung in the air, and Regina could hear Emma inhale a sharp breath from behind her. The seconds ticked onwards, and then there was a soft thump as the blonde fell defeatedly against the door, the weight of the secret she had been keeping washing over her. Regina didn’t have to be looking at her to know that Emma’s hand was tangled in her hair, as it was a familiar gesture when she was confronted with something unexpectedly overwhelming for her, but neither did she wish to turn around and confirm her assumption either. So instead Regina kept staring at the computer screen, trying not to notice how tight her throat had gotten once she had broached the delicate subject.

“When I figured out if it was true or not.”

It was said softly, almost tiredly, as though this was the very last thing Emma needed right now. And perhaps it was, as Emma’s visits with Neal weren’t exactly known to go smoothly, but Regina was far from caring about that right now. 

“And how, pray tell, were you planning on deducing that?” Regina asked sharply, finally swiveling in her chair to face the blonde against the door, watching the woman’s hand tug helplessly on the back of her neck as she sighed heavily.

“I don’t—I just… I don’t know, didn’t think it was worth worrying you about right now, okay?” Emma tried, her tone imploring for Regina not to make a huge deal out of this. “I mean, we have so much other crap going on, and I just thought—”

“This isn’t just about you, Emma!” Regina exclaimed, looking at her incredulously. Sometimes she really couldn’t fathom the woman’s train of thought; how on earth did this not fall on her scale of importance right now? “And if we’re being honest, I think we both know that it probably isn’t about you at all. You should have told me, you should have—!”

“I was just trying to protect you, okay?!” Emma shouted, unwilling to be chastised for her actions. She almost looked _offended_ for it, if Regina was reading her expression correctly. And after pushing herself off the wall in a huff, Emma continued to defend herself with a fierce, “I mean, _fuck_ , Regina, sorry for actually taking your feelings into account for once, but I didn’t want you consumed with all this curse bullshit until I had an actual _solution_ to give you for it! Explain to me how the hell that makes me in the wrong right now, because I don’t see it.”

The gesture, however misguided, caused a pang in Regina’s chest as she looked at the woman before her. Things had been so rocky between them lately that even the thought of Emma wanting to protect her from _anything_ meant something, but that still didn’t diminish the fact that Emma had been keeping something like this from her. She had no right to, especially when they both knew that the likelihood fell on _her_ being the one who had been cursed.

And God, that raised so many questions about her life that Regina, for the life of her, did not want to face right now. It was just too much.

Regina swallowed, trying to push down all of the concerns that sprouted from such a theory, and shook her head as her gaze fell on the far wall. “I shouldn’t have had to hear it from _him,_ ” Regina stressed, as Gold wasn’t exactly delicate about the matter, nor was he particularly sympathetic to it. In fact, he sounded almost gleefully amused that this could have befallen her, and that wasn’t what she had needed right then. “I deserved to hear it from you, and yet your foolish need to _coddle_ me like some kind of incompetent child—”

“That wasn’t—!” Emma tried, sounding exasperated as she cut off Regina’s train of thought. She threw out her hands haplessly before sinking down on the bed, falling onto her back as she ran her hand down her face, exhaling a frustrated sigh. “Christ, Regina, it wasn’t like—I mean, I _obviously_ would have told you eventually. Fuck. I just… I thought it was the right thing, okay? I didn’t want to upset you.” Taking her hands away from her face, Emma’s palms slapped down on the mattress as she breathed out her aggravation. “Sorry I fucked it all up. But apparently that’s just… it’s what I do now, right? Screw it. I give up.”

“Stop,” Regina told her firmly, not about to let the woman go back down that road of utter self-loathing, as she knew exactly what lay at the end of it all. “Stop pitying yourself, Emma; I’m getting tired of it. You’ve made mistakes, but they don’t define who you are. And this, by far, is the least of them, so perhaps—”

“Okay, you know what? _No,_ ” Emma cut her off, sitting up suddenly to look at the brunette across the room. Her gaze was piercing, judgmental, as she came back with, “That is probably the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever heard you say, Regina, because what the hell have _you_ been doing lately, except define yourself from _your_ mistakes? Don’t call me out on that shit when you’re in the same damn boat, okay? Cause that’s fucked.”

Regina noticeably bristled in defense. “What on earth are you talking about? I haven’t been—”

“No?” Emma challenged, her arms stiff as she held herself upwards, a fire in her eyes that was so very hard to ignore. Emma had apparently decided that should they barrel down this road, then she wasn’t about to pull any punches, and so she spoke her blunt honesty without any hesitation. “Then tell me where the hell the woman I fell in love with went; tell me why you’ve been acting this way lately, if it’s not in some desperate need to prove that you’re different. I might wallow in my self-pity like some kind of pathetic nothing, but _you_ let it change who you are under the bullshit pretense that this is the real you. But I fucking know you, Regina, and it’s _not._ ”

Regina’s jaw slacked, offense coloring her face at the other woman’s words. How _dare_ she belittle her attempt to make amends for what she had done. She wasn’t putting up some kind of façade, she was merely trying to show that there was more to her than all the evil she had done. And yes, fine, perhaps that did mean that she was defining herself by her mistakes on some level, but at least she didn’t mope around and consistently put herself down because of it! What was done was done; Regina knew that, and knew better than to wallow in it to gather sympathy, or whatever Emma’s endgame was when she spoke like that.

“I don’t know who you _thought_ you fell in love with, Miss Swan, but I can assure you, she’s right in front of you,” Regina snapped, unable to understand how Emma couldn’t see that. “So I don’t know what the hell it is that you want of me right now, but—”

“I want you to stop letting me walk the _fuck_ all over you!” Emma exclaimed furiously, pushing herself up off the bed as she gestured wildly with her hands, looking beyond frustrated at this point. “I thought I wanted it, you know? Thought you deserved to be beneath me after everything you fucking did, but everything about this is just _wrong_ and you… you’re so goddamn consumed by all this guilt that you’re treating me like I should call the shots with everything when _clearly_ , if the past few months have demonstrated anything, I obviously shouldn’t be allowed to do, because all I ever _fucking_ do is screw it up anyway!”

“I don’t—God, I don’t _want_ you to be my sacrificial lamb, okay?!” Emma exclaimed, looking at Regina helplessly, her feelings having completely overwhelmed her as she spilled out truths she couldn’t hold inside any longer. “I don’t want you to take my abuse because you think you deserve it, because even if you do, you’re still a goddamn human being, you know? I treat you like shit, Regina, and all you do in return is take care of me. I use you when it’s convenient and you _let_ me; I mean, Jesus, I even abused our safe word and you turned me being a complete asshole into some fucked up declaration of—I don’t know, _loyalty_ , or whatever, and did I really deserve it? No. I don’t deserve half the shit you give me, and you know it, and I just wish that for once you would chew me the fuck out because maybe, if nothing else, we might actually have a chance of feeling _normal_ again!”

Regina’s stomach sat heavily in her gut, each sentence that came pouring out of Emma’s mouth causing her to grow more and more sick with the weight of it. She felt like she was being slapped in the face; like everything she had done since the curse broke was so irrelevant once the surface was scratched and the ugly truth shown beneath it. Because despite how horrible, how sick, how _angry_ Emma’s words made her, Regina knew that on some level she was speaking the truth. She had coddled her. She _had_ given Emma too much control, and far more sympathy than she probably deserved. And at the time, Regina had believed it to be for the best. She believed after what she had done, she deserved to be fairly sacrificial when it came to the woman that she loved. But what had it achieved, really? All it did was allow them both to sink deeper into a routine that wasn’t healthy for either of them.

And so Regina stood, her anger over the entire situation getting the better of her as her eyes flashed and she advanced on her. “You want the truth?” she challenged, as though Emma should have really known better than to even ask. “You want to know how _I_ feel?”

Emma tried to speak, perhaps to tell her yes, but Regina didn’t care anymore what she wanted; she was going to tell her regardless now. She was _done._

“You’re a pathetic _shadow_ of the woman I fell in love with, Miss Swan,” Regina began fiercely, not watering down the truth at all anymore. “You’re selfish, childish, and weak, and every single day, instead of trying to move past your addiction and grow from it, you wallow in the repercussions of it, expecting _me_ to pick up the pieces after each of your incessant breakdowns, because you know damn well that no one else would even care to deal with this level of utter ridiculousness. I already have one child, Emma, and I don’t care to have another! You are an _adult,_ and you need to learn to deal with your problems like one, because I am not here to hold your hand as you stumble through life in some kind of rampant display of utter juvenility.”

Emma looked wounded by that, but Regina didn’t care, because she was far from over.

“I look at you now, and the worst part of how I feel isn’t that I’m heartbroken by what you’ve become, but that I’m starting to honestly get worried that I’m going to be stuck with it, stuck with _you_ for the rest of my life; that I’m gonna be roped into constantly fixing you when I can’t even begin to fix myself, and I _despise_ you for never thinking of me in such a regard. You don’t care enough to help me, because then you wouldn’t feel like the entire world is revolving around _you,_ and I hate that more than you could ever possibly imagine.”

Regina could feel the emotion beginning to burn hot in her chest, and furious tears prickled the back of her eyes as she pointed at her and accused, “Because you are _not_ the only one who’s world collapsed that day. I spent so much of my life miserable and alone, searching for happiness that I never believed I’d ever have, and by what I can now only imagine was some cruel _joke_ , I seemed to have found that in you, and then almost immediately afterwards got blackmailed into completely destroying it. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, the most _painful_ thing I have ever had to do, and every single day, a part of me wishes that I had never told you I loved you at all, and just allowed Gold to publish those damn pictures, because then at least I would have someone who cared enough to try to make things better.”

“But I don’t,” Regina choked out, her emotions getting the best of her as a hot tear slipped down her cheek. “I have _you._ A woman who I am so irrevocably in love with, that seems to only have a mere sliver of who I once cared for inside of them now. And like an _idiot_ I continue to reach for it, because you… being with you, it was the only time I felt truly _whole_. But that sliver has become so buried beneath all this anger and self-loathing that all I’m doing now is probably just proving myself a complete masochist, because I don’t think she’s coming back. I don’t think my Emma is coming back, and God, I _hate_ you for practically suffocating the life out of her.”

“Because she was… she was _strong_ , and she was beautiful, and so incredibly fierce,” Regina told her, sorrow straining her words as she remembered what they used to have, who they used to be. “Yet she was also tender, patient, _loving._ And I miss such insignificant little things about it all, like how she would always smile so brightly when I would cut her pancakes into these… God, these _stupid_ little shapes that she insisted upon—” 

The sound that poured from Emma’s lips then was so devastatingly sad; it was this choked little sob that sounded almost like a hiccup from how tight her throat had become, and a hand flew over the blonde’s mouth as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Stop,” she begged, the words coming out terribly distressed. “God, please stop…”

But Regina couldn’t. It was all coming out now, for better or for worse, and she just had to continue until she had no more truth left to give her. “And it’s… it’s _terrible,_ because I find myself wanting to do that for you again, just so maybe I could see her again just once, just one tiny look on your face that will make me remember what it was like to be happy with her, and that’s… it’s _pathetic._ ” Her hand fisted in her shirt, right above her heart, where it ached so badly that Regina could hardly bear it anymore. “Because at the end of the day, I’m just as bad as you; I’m just as weak, just as selfish. I want the woman I love back so badly that I’ve begun to wish away your pain for my own reasons, and not because it would help _you_. And I don’t…. love isn’t supposed to _be_ that way, is it? And yet…”

Regina’s words fell away from nothing, tears of distress and loss staining her cheeks as her heart clenched painfully in her chest. Emma had looked so wounded when she had begun on the little tirade that she had asked for, but it wasn’t until Regina began to speak about the woman that she used to be that she had fallen completely apart, looking more lost than Regina thought she had ever seen her be since she had known her. Emma’s hand that was pressed against her lips was shaking as she stared at her, until she allowed her body to do the only thing that felt natural to her, and she crossed the distance between them, allowing the weight of her distress to fall against Regina’s chest.

And Regina clung to her, because despite how broken they both were, Emma was the only thing in her life that felt solid anymore.

“I wish I never told you I loved you either,” Emma breathed against her chest, sounding like she hated herself for even admitting that out loud. Regina knew the feeling. “I wish nothing changed, that you were still… still doing stupid things like _fussing_ over how I always forget my umbrella, and not worrying about if I’ll screw up again and drink every time we’re apart. I wish that you would have spent the rest of your life not knowing if I loved you for who you really were, just because it would have been so much easier. And that’s fucked, isn’t it? We’re so _fucked,_ Regina…”

“And I’m sorry,” she choked out, her hands fisting in Regina’s shirt as she pressed her face further into her breasts as Emma allowed herself to feel everything, and could barely do anything else but cry. “I was supposed to be… _better_ than this, you know? I used to be. I used to be—I was strong, wasn’t I? I dealt with all the shit life threw at me, but this… it—it broke me, and I don’t even really know _why._ Why was it that _this_ was the moment when it all finally became too much, when I’m supposed to be this fucking bullshit _Savior?_ What the hell kind of Savior becomes drunk and miserable instead of standing tall and dealing with… with the fact that….”

“Say it,” Regina encouraged, the words coming out scratchy and raw. She knew she needed to do this, needed to face it. “Just… just _accept_ it, Emma, because no matter how much you try to immerse yourself in denial, it’s never going away. Just _say it._ ”

Emma took a shuddered inhale of breath, the air being exhaled hot against Regina’s skin as the blonde blinked back tears, and tried to stand tall once more. “I… I was born in a world that I thought was just a fairytale,” she began, her voice trembling with the weight of the truth she kept trying to suppress in favor of her sanity. “Magic is… it’s fucking _real,_ and the woman I love is—she’s addicted to it, and basically became the movie villain I used to be scared of as a child, only a thousand times worse. I fell in love with the Evil Queen. I fell in love with a murderer, and yet she’s still the most perfect woman I’ve ever known and it… I-I don’t know how to be okay with that. But I… I _want_ to, and I… I want…”

Emma lost the battle with her emotions then and she choked back another sob, trying to continue, trying to face the truth she tried to use alcohol to run away from. “I want my parents to tell me that they’re _sorry,_ ” she admitted in a soft voice. “I want… I want them to regret sending me away; even if it was to save everyone. I want them to tell me that they hated that I had to grow up alone, but all my… all my…”

“Say it,” Regina softly encouraged again, her heart beating heavily in her ribcage. She felt like she was going to be sick from Emma’s words about how horrible the stories about her turned out to be, but she suppressed it in order for Emma to finish. Because she needed to finish; she needed to deal with this.

“My _mother,_ ” Emma spat out, the word sounding so angry and distressed as she allowed herself to finally view Snow as the mother that abandoned her. “All my mom is fucking concerned with is how my love life broke me, but I was fucked so much earlier than that because of her. Because of her and my _Dad,_ and I don’t—I don’t fucking _care_ if they don’t know how to deal with their guilt, and are only trying to focus on what they think they can fix, because that’s for you to; not… not them. They need to fix what _they_ did, and it makes me feel like they must not even care, to never talk about it. To never try, when all I wanted my whole life was to know that I mattered to them. That they were sorry for letting me go, but I don’t… I don’t know if they’ll ever say it, and I—”

“Oh god,” Emma breathed, unable to stop as her hands fisted tighter in Regina’s shirt. “The worst part, the worst _fucking_ part of all this, you know, was that it wasn’t even them, was it? It was _you._ It was—this entire thing, my entire childhood was your fault, and yet I hate them more for it, and that’s so fucked up. But you—you even tried to kill me, didn’t you, after I was born? The book, it—”

“I didn’t,” Regina interrupted, her voice tight with the strain of that admission, and it got so much worse when Emma finally looked up at her in question, eyes glassy and vulnerable and so, so sad. “That… that damned _book,_ ” she spat in contempt. “It’s full of assumptions. I might have been cruel, but I would have never hurt a child. I came for you that night because, because I…”

Oh God, it was so terribly messed up, because of how everything had turned out between them. It made Regina feel dirty, but she probably owed Emma the truth, despite how it would sound. “I was going to take you from her,” Regina admitted softly. “I was going to bring you to Storybrooke, and I was… I was going to raise you, like you were my own. You were—you were supposed to be my daughter, Emma. I wanted a child so very badly, and I wanted my revenge on your mother even more so. And doing that, it… it would have achieved both, but you were gone when I got there and… and I…”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Emma exhaled, allowing that secret to wash over her. Her eyebrows creased as she tried to work out how she felt about that, but Regina could see that she didn’t have the first clue. “That’s… that’s some twisted shit, Regina. You wanted me as a _daughter_ , and instead you… I mean, you knew who I was, and yet you started fucking _sleeping_ with me and—”

“I know how it sounds,” Regina admitted, shame coloring her cheeks as she finally allowed herself to feel how screwed up that really was. “But should you have stayed in Storybrooke with me, you would have never aged from an infant. And when I saw you for the first time, you were… _very_ much a grown woman, and so I just… I tried not to think of it. I didn’t dwell on an idle wish, because it never happened. But _this…_ this happened.”

“And is it better?” Emma challenged, the words sounding spiteful. “Is _this_ really better? Or do you still wish that it had gone your way, that I would have been your fucking _kid,_ and not some screwed up woman that you—”

“Stop it,” Regina told her fiercely, grasping the underside of Emma’s chin and forcing her to look in her eyes. “I may regret so many things in my life, but I will never regret falling in love with you; no matter how much it may hurt me, and no matter how unlikely it is that we’ll ever be happy again. Do you understand me? I might not prefer this version of you, but I’m still so hopelessly in love with it, with _you_ , that sometimes I don’t know how to think straight.”

“I was _always_ meant to love you, Emma, and perhaps I could have loved you in another way, an easier way, but that doesn’t mean that I would trade how I feel if I could. Would _you?_ ” Regina challenged. “Would you have rather had me as a mother who was there for you, and not as the woman who fell in love with you?”

“I…” Emma tried, and distress crossed over her face as she admitted, sounding so terribly self-loathing about it, “I don’t _know,_ because a part of me is like ‘well at least then I would have had a mother who was around,’ and that’s… this is literally the most fucked up conversation we could ever have and it’s making me feel _sick,_ Jesus Christ…”

Emma tried to pull away, but Regina grasped her forearm and brought her back to her. “Emma,” she told her strongly, trying to make her not feel ill for the very same reason she did when _she_ thought of it. “Regardless of what I may have wished once, I am _not_ your mother—”

“Yes, I’m fucking aware of that, _thank you,_ ” Emma exclaimed furiously, sounding so terribly torn over the revelation that Regina was now regretting ever voicing. “And what’s worse is that I’m painfully aware of the fact that, apparently, the only damn person in this world who actually _wanted_ to be my mother and raise me, is the woman I’m currently _sleeping_ with! So excuse me while that fucks with my head a little, alright?! I spent my entire life wanting someone to want me in that way, and—”

“Your mother, _Snow,_ she did want you in that way—”

“Then why the hell did she let me go?!”

“Because I forced her to!” Regina shouted, the admission causing a terrible look of pain to wash across the other woman’s face. And God, she didn’t want to stand up for Snow, it was the very last thing Regina ever wanted to do, but it was the truth, and Emma needed to hear it. “I did this to you, Emma. And I’m _sorry,_ I truly am, but it’s my fault. I didn’t give them a choice—”

“There was… there was _always_ a choice, Regina,” Emma told her, voice trembling as she wrapped her arms around her midsection. “She could have raised me like you wanted to; just kept me as a baby, frozen in time, but she let me go, and I hate her for that. I hate _both_ of them for that, and I hate you for sticking up for them, when you’re the reason my life became such shit in the first place.”

Regina swallowed the lump in her throat, tears prickling the back of her eyes as she tried, somehow, to make it better, even though she knew she never could. “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “Emma, I know it means nothing, I know it changes nothing, but I am _so_ —”

“I know,” Emma whispered, her fingers holding tighter to her own shirt as she admitted sadly, “And all I want… all I fucking _need,_ is for them to be too. And that’s what—that’s what _hurts_ , Regina. Because I don’t think that, unless I ask for it, they’ll tell me that they are. And I can’t—I can’t _ask_ for it, because then it wouldn’t mean anything, and I just…”

She dissolved into tears then, completely giving up on trying to hold herself together, and Regina gathered Emma up into her arms, holding the woman she loved as she fell apart. Emma grasped for her, pressing her face into her breasts as the abandoned child won out and her voice, it became so terribly small and innocent as she asked, “Why won’t they just tell me they’re sorry? Why… why is it that a woman who’s supposed to be evil cares enough to feel sorry for what she did to me, but my own _parents…?_ ”

Regina’s fingers tightened in Emma’s hair, and she kissed the blonde’s forehead as she shushed her. “I don’t know, love,” she whispered, hating that she didn’t have an answer for her; hating that this had hurt Emma so much more than she had ever let on, hating that she somehow didn’t _see_ it beforehand. “I really don’t know…”

And she didn’t, but Regina was damn certain that once she was able, she would find out. Because Emma, she didn’t… she didn’t deserve to feel so unloved, so uncared about, when in all actuality, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

**TBC…**


	22. Slippers

**CHAPTER TWENTY TWO  
Slippers**

_I’ll be stronger._

That was the promise that Emma gave to Regina later that night, because God, there was only so many times she could fall apart before she could barely even stand to look at herself in the mirror anymore. The image of herself, of what she had become, completely disgusted her. When Emma was in the system, she used to look down on those who wallowed in their self-pity, because the last thing it did was change anything. It wasn’t productive, it was _pathetic._ It was weak, and Regina had been absolutely right in her assessment of the person she had turned out to be.

Emma didn’t want to be that way anymore. She was tired of feeling sorry for herself, tired of living half her life in denial, and tired of not being happy. And maybe she’d never really be wholly happy, but that didn’t mean that she had to live her life in misery instead. It wasn’t one or the other; that wasn’t the way the world worked. Nothing was black and white, and so Emma strove to find a balance in her life that she had needed for a very long time.

And maybe she wouldn’t find it right away, but she was going to _try._ And what was more than that, was that Regina had firmly taken her chin in her hand after she had said that, looked her dead in the eyes, and fiercely told her, “Good, because I’m no longer going to accept anything less than the woman that I know you are. Both of us deserve better than that, Emma; better than _this._ ”

Emma had nodded her understanding, and even from just those simple words, it caused her to feel so much less crippled by all of this. Because Emma had leaned on her, and should Regina have continued to let her, the blonde knew she would never be able to walk on her own again. And Emma wanted that, she wanted to finally pick herself up and move forward, but if she had the option of falling safely into Regina’s arms, then they both knew that she would take it without hesitation. It was the simple answer, the easy way out, but yet when she indulged in it, all it had done was drag them both down.

Regina’s words were her own promise of the same though, to stop acting like less than she was, because in the end, they both knew it wasn’t just one of them that caused their relationship to become so broken. They fed on each other’s weaknesses, on each other’s misery, and that wasn’t a way to live. If nothing else over these past few months, they’ve managed to prove that neither of them know how to have a healthy breakup. In fact, neither of them really know how to break up at _all._

And maybe they never would be together again in the way they once were, but they needed to call some kind of truce in the meantime. Doing nothing else but fighting and fucking wasn’t really helping either of their sanity. Emma was already screwed up enough by actually admitting out loud that she had more parental issues than she had originally let on, and since she didn’t really know how to fix that, she decided instead that she was going to try to focus on what she could fix, on what she _was_ fixing.

Emma hadn’t had a drink in eight days. And maybe in the long run that was nothing to celebrate, considering she still found herself thinking about wanting one at least a couple times throughout the day, but it was still something. It was proof that she wasn’t as much of a fuck up as she had thought she was, and that even though she felt really weak at times, she wasn’t; not completely. Because it… it took actual _strength_ to do something like that, and so instead of dwelling on how pathetic it was to fall into an addiction in the first place, Emma just had to learn to accept that it had happened, and focus on how to get better.

So yeah, maybe it was small, maybe it was nothing in the grand scheme of things, but Emma would take her wins where she could get them, because it still mattered. It had to, because without it, she didn’t really have much else going for her.

Emma wrinkled her nose at the sound of heavy retching, her fingers fisting tightly in Regina’s hair to get it out of her face before the woman began hurling into the bushes on the side of the road. It was strange; to be the one on the other side of things, even though this had nothing to do with Regina being drunk. Still, to be the one taking care of her for a change actually made Emma feel like a decent person, which if she was being honest, she hadn’t felt like in quite a long time.

A car door closed, and as Emma was running her hand down Regina’s back, she glanced at Neal, who was leaning against her bug with his face scrunched up in disgust as he watched his son’s adoptive mother empty out the contents of his stomach. “She gonna be alright?” he asked tentatively, even though the question was probably stupid, given what he was witnessing.

“She gets air sick,” Emma explained, her tone a little tense, like for some reason she felt the need to _defend_ Regina even though this was beyond her control. “She’ll be fine.”

“We landed two hours ago.”

Another sickening sound came from the woman hunched over the foliage, and Emma winced as she started rubbing soothing circles at the base of her spine. “Yeah, well, clearly the car ride didn’t help,” Emma snapped at him, before turning her attention back to Regina, who was now spitting the remnants of her sickness in probably the most unladylike manner that Emma had ever witnessed from her.

Regina groaned, sinking down on her haunches as she tangled a hand in her hair and closed her eyes, just trying to breathe enough to move past it. Emma sunk down to get on her level, her brow creasing in concern as she brushed the hair away from the brunette’s eyes. “You need some water?”

Regina nodded, her breathing uneven as she tried to fight her nausea. “Please.”

“Kay,” Emma murmured, giving Regina a soft smile as she placed her hand over the one that lay on Regina’s knee, giving it a slight squeeze before looking up at Neal to ask that he hand her a water bottle. The words didn’t come when she was confronted by this knowing look on his face though, with one eyebrow raised and an expression like he was _judging_ her, and it caused Emma to scowl.

“What?” she challenged, daring him to say something to her. Neal didn’t take the bait though, and just shook his head as he turned away from the women in front of him.

“Nothing.” Clearly whatever he had to say, he didn’t want to discuss in front of Regina. “Where’s the water?”

“There should be a few bottles in the trunk.”

After Neal retrieved it and tossed it to her, Emma twisted off the cap and handed it to Regina. The woman drank almost its entire contents, trying to get the taste of bile out of her mouth as Emma’s fingers weaved through her hair, trying to get it to stop sticking to her forehead. Regina still didn’t look well, even though she didn’t seem like she was going to pitch over again. 

“Better?”

Regina took a couple deep breaths before nodding. She moved to stand and Emma grasped ahold of her hand, helping her to her feet. “You want to drive?” the blonde offered. “Sometimes that helps with motion sickness.”

“No, although I do wish you would learn some semblance of responsibility and just _slow down,_ ” Regina told her, her tone biting with aggravation over getting that sick in the first place. The last time they flew, she had only felt nauseous. This time it had actually amounted to something, and she clearly wasn’t happy with it. “You drive like a reckless teenager, and that piece of junk can barely run as it is. Are you _planning_ to send us all to our deaths, dear? Because that’s what it seems like every time your foot hits the gas.”

Emma took a few deep breaths, and began counting backwards from ten. 

“Hey, this thing is a classic,” Neal defended, sounding just as offended as Emma felt every time Regina shit on her car, and that thought made her want to punch a hole in the nearest wall. _Eight, seven…_

Regina shot him an irritated look, almost as though it was taxing for her to just breathe the same _air_ as him, let alone actually speak to him like he was worth addressing. “I don’t believe Emma needs nor _wants_ you to defend her, so please, do us all a favor and only give your opinion when it’s explicitly asked for, and perhaps go sit in the car until you actually become relevant.”

“I wasn’t defending her, I was defending the car that _I_ gave her,” Neal corrected, his expression indicating that he wasn’t going to just put up with Regina’s attempt to make him feel insignificant. “The bug is in excellent condition given its age, and if you can’t see that, then maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be giving their opinion, lady.”

Shit.

“The car that _you…?_ ” Regina began, her tone angry and disbelieving before her eyes caught Emma’s. She didn’t finish her sentence though, having more class than to get into an argument in front of witnesses; so instead Regina just tensed her jaw, her eyes flashing as she brutally ripped open the passenger side door before getting in, the thing slamming in her wake and making Emma nearly jump out of her skin at the sound.

Fuck. _Damnit._

A scathing look was shot at Neal. “Why?” Emma asked him, throwing out her hands furiously. “Just… _why?_ ”

Regina was already on edge because she was sick, but now she was going to be _jealous_ too? Or worse, she might think of it as some kind of betrayal; that Emma would keep something of Neal’s even after they fell in love, and— _Jesus,_ this was not going to be a fun car ride. Emma was already feeling the onset of a massive headache, and they still had another hour and a half before they even got to Augusta.

“Hey, how the hell was I supposed to know you didn’t tell her?” Neal defended, holding up his hands in surrender in response to the look of death that was being shot his way. He sighed heavily when the look didn’t dissipate, shaking his head. “Why does it even matter that much anyway?”

Emma’s hand slammed down on the hood of the car as she was coming around it to get to the driver’s side, and she shot him a glare as she hissed, “ _You know why._ ” Because Neal wasn’t stupid, and Emma knew that he was aware that something was going on between her and Regina, despite her insistence that they weren’t together. “Just get in the damn car, alright? And maybe do me a favor and not piss her off even more while you’re at it, because we have a long way to go and I’m already starting to get a migraine.”

Emma opened the car door with an exasperated sigh before bending down and addressing Regina. “You need another water before we go?”

“I think I’ll manage without your help, dear,” Regina responded tersely, without even sparing the blonde a glance in her direction. Emma exhaled a tired breath before slumping into the driver’s seat.

Yup, this was going to be _fun._

[x]

In hindsight, Emma should have probably expected this.

And the bickering, she did. Regina treating Neal like he was nothing more than an annoying peasant with even more annoying demands? Yeah, Emma saw that coming, just as she saw Neal getting pissed about the way he was being spoken to, because the man _really_ did not enjoy getting told what to do, even if Regina did have all the rights when it came to their son and what she expected him to do once they finally met. 

But what Emma didn’t see coming, and what she probably should have, was that with Regina already feeling sick, her patience had a much shorter fuse than normal. That overlooked fact caused Emma to scream furiously, “For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to freaking _drive!_ ” when Regina had hit her limit and grabbed Emma’s hand, syphoning magic from her for a short moment so that she could deal with her little ‘problem’ in a way that was much less violent than expected, but still effective all the same.

And now Neal was strapped in the back seat by more seat buckles than one should normally be wearing, with one of them being wrapped tightly around his mouth like a gag. He was _furious_ , and should Emma have not been driving, she probably would have laughed at how ridiculous he looked right then. But she was driving, and so that caused her to snap, “Are you out of your damn _mind?!_ ” instead, because Jesus fucking Christ, she nearly swerved off the road!

“He was irritating me,” was all Regina gave in response. Not an apology, just _he was irritating me._ Well great, thank you, for nearly causing an accident and being so concerned about it. Emma fumed and violently hit her hazard lights before pulling off to the side of the highway in one fast, jerking motion that caused Regina to look a little green as her shoulder slammed into the door.

“What the _hell—!_ ” Regina tried to yell, but then she blanched and murmured, “Oh God…” before practically shoving the car door open and tumbling out onto the grass. Her throat made a disgusting sounding croak as she dry heaved, and Emma winced. Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have pulled over that quickly or roughly.

Sighing, Emma glanced back at Neal, who was still strapped in and completely unable to move, before deciding she probably needed to deal with one thing at a time, and just left him there as she stepped from the car. His muffled sounds of protest as he fought against his bindings were cut off as Emma closed the door, stepping around the side of the vehicle to come towards Regina.

“I really think you should just drive,” Emma tried, noting that this time, Regina didn’t seem to actually be vomiting up anything. That was good at least, even though dry heaving wasn’t the most pleasant thing either. “I think it’ll help your motion sickness and, you know, then you might actually be too damn distracted to almost get us into a freaking magic-induced _accident_ too. So, bonus there.”

Regina shot her a dark look, but said nothing as she tried to regulate her breathing and fight her nausea. While she did that Emma popped the trunk of her car and grabbed another water bottle, before holding out it to her in offering. Regina took it and had a few sips before leaning against the side of the car, exhaling a loud sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she finally apologized, side-glancing the blonde beside her. “You’re right; I shouldn’t have done that while you were driving, it was terribly dangerous. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Look, I’m obviously not Neal’s biggest fan either,” Emma responded, pushing her hair back from her eyes and squinting in the glare of the hot afternoon’s sun. “And trust me, I get having the urge to just tie him up and gag him, but at some point, you guys actually need to come to some kind of agreement about Henry, and all this is doing is pissing him off more.”

The brunette said nothing; she just stared out at the trees, her nails clicking against the plastic of the bottle.

“We made a deal, Regina,” Emma reminded her, not really fond of that fact either, but knowing better than to try to fuck it off. “And like it or not we should probably stick to it, otherwise Neal might just go behind our backs to meet our son and that’ll… well, that probably won’t make either of us Henry’s favorite person. I mean, the kid’s gonna be pissed at me enough as it is for lying about him being dead, and I just… I _really_ don’t wanna add more shit on top of it.”

“I’m aware what deal we made, dear, and I will uphold it,” Regina responded tersely. “But I am already irritated with the fact that my motion sickness has yet to dissipate, still distracted by the theory that I may be _cursed_ , and really, I don’t wish to add anything more on top of it like dealing with an ignorant man who actually assumes he has any say in this matter.”

Emma’s brow creased in concern over her fear. “You know, it’s not necessarily you who’s—”

“Of course it’s me,” Regina snapped, her gaze connecting with Emma’s. “You weren’t in that world long enough, unless you were cursed in the womb. And really, dear, if anyone was going to do _that_ , it would have been me.”

Emma tended to agree, but see, this is _exactly_ why she didn’t want to tell her about this. Regina was gonna consume herself with worry and paranoia, when they didn’t even know if it was justified yet. “His theory might still be wrong,” she tried. “It could be something else. But when we… when we get to Storybrooke, we can figure out if it’s true or not, okay? Gold’s gotta have some way of testing it.”

Regina snorted. “Apparently you seem to have forgotten that I’ve been _banished._ I cannot go back with you.”

“Regina, I can’t use magic without you,” Emma reminded her, shooting her a look like she should have realized. “And those slippers need magic to work. You have to come back, even if it’s just for a little while. My…” Emma hesitated for a moment, but made herself push though it and finished, “ _parents_ , you know, they’ll understand; they’ll get it. I mean, if the only way Neal and I can get back is you, then it doesn’t really leave much room for argument anyway.”

Regina sighed heavily before taking another sip of her water. “Still,” she murmured. “It is unlikely that they’ll allow me there longer than an hour. I’ll be lucky if I can even see Henry in that time.”

“We’ll figure it out, alright?” Emma promised, because she knew they had to. Emma wasn’t going to just let Regina leave Storybrooke before finding out whether or not she or herself were actually cursed, regardless of what her parents thought about it, and they needed Gold to do that.

Regina didn’t comment, probably not wanting to allow herself to hope for anything. Silence passed between the two women then as the brunette continued to drink her water and breathe in the fresh air, and after a moment Emma glanced over at her, chewing on the inside of her cheek. She really needed to clear the air between them before they got back in the car, because this journey seriously didn’t need any more drama. Still, Emma wasn’t exactly thrilled with broaching the subject.

“Look I’m… I’m really sorry,” she mentioned, nodding her head towards the bug as she rubbed the back of her neck, “you know, about the whole car thing; I probably should have mentioned that sooner. And I swear, I—”

“I’m not _jealous,_ ” Regina retorted before she could even finish, her expression fixing into a challenging glare. “If that’s what you’re implying. That man’s existence is barely even above my notice; what he may or may not have given you is really of no concern of mine.”

“Right,” Emma deadpanned. “Because that being the first thing out of your mouth before I can even finish my sentence doesn’t indicate jealousy at _all._ But then I suppose neither did you glaring at me and stomping off once you found out either, huh?”

Regina tensed her jaw at her retort, her nostrils flaring. “I just hardly see the reasoning for keeping this piece of junk for as long as you have. If you want a new car, dear, I will gladly buy you one.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Regina, I don’t need you to stake your claim on me by buying me a new car. I _like_ this car, alright? And not because Neal gave it to me. It’s just… it’s been like the one constant in my life that’s been full of change, you know? And it’s not like you don’t know what emotional attachment is to inanimate objects is like; I mean, you have your damn _tree,_ don’t you?”

At the mention of her apple tree, Regina’s face fell. She had had to leave it behind when she left, and that obviously didn’t sit well with her.

“Which we’ll figure out how to bring with us when we move, okay?” Emma tried, since yeah, she knew what it was like to need something that was a part of her past. “But just… lay off the car, alright? I know you hate it – you hated it even before you knew Neal gave it to me – but _I_ like it, and I don’t wanna get rid of it. Besides, it really does run fine; maybe not as good as your Benz, but it’s not gonna fall apart from underneath you either, so I’d appreciate it if you stopped exaggerating.”

Regina was silent for a moment, still looking out at the trees as the light midafternoon breeze blew her hair back from her eyes. “I wasn’t.”

Emma’s brow furrowed, not understanding what she was referring to. “Wasn’t what?”

“Trying to ‘stake my claim.’ Believe me, dear, I’m aware I no longer hold that right.”

Emma pursed her lips, feeling a slight sense of guilt inhabit her gut at the woman’s words, despite not being entirely sure of why. Maybe it was because, after everything they had gone through in the last few months, it didn’t even begin to resemble the truth anymore. Emma had tried very hard to distance herself from Regina after the curse broke, but how successful had she been, really? It seemed in the end, Emma’s life would always be tied her. And while once she had hated that fact more than anything, now it seemed to be far easier to accept the truth of it, because it wasn’t going away.

It really was easy, Emma found, to love Regina. It just wasn’t as easy to forgive her, and there were times when Emma wanted nothing more than to be able to, despite how terribly difficult it was.

Emma had already been betrayed by someone she loved once and had vowed never to be so stupid again. But she had, and she had gotten hurt, and it was just difficult… to believe that if she took Regina back, if they worked through all their problems, if Emma actually began to understand why her past was the way it was and forgave her for her transgressions, that the woman wouldn’t turn around and hurt her again. She trusted Regina with her physical and mental wellbeing, but emotional? She couldn’t, not anymore.

Still, in the end, did it even matter if Emma trusted her with it? Regina might just have the most influence over that than anyone else, whether Emma wanted her to or not, because she _did_ love her. And so Emma voiced a truth they both knew, but probably bore repeating anyhow. 

“Yeah well… pretty sure you have it more than anyone else anyway, so my point still stands that you don’t need to assert it by buying me flashy things.”

Emma didn’t look at her when she said that, her toe digging into the soft grass. She could see Regina side-glance her out of her peripheral, but Emma didn’t want to continue this conversation, so she fished her keys out of her pocket and held them out to her instead.

“Just drive, please. It’ll make you feel better, I swear.”

Regina’s gaze flickered to the offering for a moment before exhaling a soft sigh and reaching out for the keys. “Fine, but that man is staying gagged for the rest of the trip. I don’t want to deal with him.”

Emma sighed heavily. “ _Regina._ ”

Regina just raised an uncaring eyebrow in response as she crossed around the car to get to the driver’s side. “It’s either that or I lock him in the trunk,” she told her, opening the door. “If you wish, you may ask him which option he prefers.”

Emma just rubbed her temples, trying to dull another forthcoming headache. Why she thought she would be able to survive a car ride with _both_ of her exes, she really had no idea.

[x]

Driving, at least, seemed to help with Regina’s motion sickness, and in turn, she became much easier to deal with, which benefited Neal as he finally got released within the last half hour of their trip. He _really_ wasn’t happy about what Regina had done to him, but Emma just shot him a look that pleaded with him not to start, because while the brunette might be a little more forgiving at the moment, that didn’t mean she was going to stay that way, and really, Emma could do without any more drama today.

“She’s insane,” Neal told her as they leaned against the bug a little while later, watching as Regina strode through the doors of the Department of Health and Human Services with a fiery purpose. As far as plans went, this wasn’t exactly the best, but it wasn’t like Emma had brought her badge when she left Storybrooke; she hadn’t really thought she would need it. Right now she wished she hadn’t been so stupid though, because it would have been a hell of a lot easier for an officer of the law to pull Dorothy out of their custody.

“She’s temperamental,” Emma corrected, folding her arms across her chest as she stared at the building. “And very territorial. Henry’s _her_ son, Neal. She already had one of his birth parents barrel their way into the kid’s life, and believe me when I tell you that you got off easy; she made my life miserable for months after I got to town. And while she trusts now that I won’t take him away from her, she doesn’t trust _you._ You gotta earn your way into Henry’s life, if you actually want to be a part of it.”

“I do,” Neal assured her, a wave of unexpected emotion passing over his face as he shifted his weight between his feet. “He’s… he’s my son, Emma. We used to talk about having kids one day, you know? And maybe this isn’t the way either of us wanted it, but—”

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” Emma interrupted, rounding on him. “This isn’t our second chance at a family, okay? That right was lost to us the day I gave him up, so the best either of us can hope for is that Regina continues to allow us to watch him grow up. We will never raise him, Neal. We will never have a family together, with Henry or any other child. I don’t take well to betrayal, and at most, all I can really offer you is tolerance. You’re here, in my life again, and maybe I don’t like that, but I have to accept it, for Henry’s sake. Our _child,_ Neal, is the only reason you are getting leeway, otherwise I would have beat you senseless by now.”

“I wasn’t—!” Neal tried to defend, but he just looked frustrated as he exhaled an impatient sigh. “I’m not an idiot, Emma. I know I fucked up every chance of us ever being together again. I don’t expect to ever get you back, and that’s okay with me. It’s been ten years, and I’ve moved on. But I still _care_ about you, and even if I never can, I’m still gonna try to make things right between us. I owe you that at least.”

“Really wouldn’t hold my breath over it, if I were you.”

Neal sighed heavily, but didn’t push the issue. He knew things weren’t going to be fixed between them overnight, and honestly, Emma was having a hard enough time forgiving Regina, the woman she _loved,_ so what chance did he have, really? She would tolerate him, because he was there. But that was about it.

Silence passed between them for a few moments before Neal nodded his head towards the building. “You really think she can pull this off?”

“Trust me,” Emma responded, “if there’s one thing Regina is good at, it’s making everyone else feel insignificant. She was a Queen, then a Mayor. If anyone knows how to assert superiority, it’s her. She’s probably scaring some of those people half to death right now just by a single look.”

“She’s still gonna have to explain herself.”

Emma laughed at that. She couldn’t help it. “Regina doesn’t explain herself, Neal. She _dictates,_ and people either fall in line or get caught in the crossfire. Trust me, I know that firsthand.”

Neal smirked as he guessed. “Crossfire?”

“Yeah, well,” Emma shrugged, a small smile crossing her face as she remembered. Even though it was hell back then, a part of her was still fond of it, which probably meant nothing else than that she really was stupidly in love with the woman. “I don’t really like getting told what to do.”

“And that’s why she respects you, isn’t it? You stood up to her.”

Neal’s deduction caused Emma to side-glance him. “Don’t get any ideas. She won’t take it well if you try; hell, she barely took it well when it came to _me._ So unless you plan to—” But she caught herself, and her words fell away to nothing. Neal, however, had already gotten the general idea.

“What, _sleep_ with her?” he guessed. Emma shot him a death glare, and he held up his hands in surrender, taking two steps backwards; probably because he knew his next words wouldn’t get received well. “You know, for someone who says that you’re not dating, you’re kinda territorial about her. But I mean hey, if you’re just using her or whatever to get close to Henry, then maybe we can—”

Emma didn’t think, she just moved. Her fist collided with his face before the man could even finish his sentence, and Neal spat blood on the pavement from where his tooth cut his cheek. As he held his bruised flesh, Emma’s eyes flashed as she advanced on him. How fucking dare he think something like that; Regina was more than just some damn _mark._

“ _Fuck,_ alright, I’m sorry!” Neal quickly apologized, moving away from Emma before she could do any more damage. “But Jesus, Em, it’s not like that was entirely out of left field; we used to screw people over for a living all the damn time—!”

“Yeah, _ten years ago,_ ” Emma spat, furious at the implication. “I’m not that person anymore, Neal, so you can just fuck right off with your idiotic assumptions. What’s between me and Regina is none of your business, and it’s going to stay that way, do you understand me? I’m warning you, _don’t_ bring it up again.”

Neal just shook his head, a furious expression plastered on his face as he spit blood once more. He looked like he was about to retort, but Regina took that moment to exit the side door of the building, a firm grasp on a young girl’s arm who looked like she was about two seconds from bursting into tears. She seemed terrified, and it was then Emma realized that out of everyone to send in there, it probably shouldn’t have been the freaking _Evil Queen._

“Get in the car!” Regina snapped, her pace quickening as she dragged the girl along with her. Her demeanor didn’t leave any room for interpretation; she hadn’t taken Dorothy from there with DHS’s permission, and from the looks of it, it didn’t even seem she had the _girl’s_ permission either.

“No, please, I’ll give you whatever you want, just leave me alone—!”

The front door of the building burst open then, two guards having realized that something was off about Regina’s appearance in their facility. When they caught sight of her dragging Dorothy, one of them pointed and yelled, “There!” presumably so other people could help detain them and, Jesus, this was not how Emma wanted this to go down.

“Shit, _go!_ ” she shouted, practically shoving Neal into the passenger side door on her way to the other side. The man grunted on impact, but quickly sprang into action and opened the back door for Regina first before clambering into his own seat. Dorothy looked too afraid to actually outright _fight_ Regina, but she was still dragging her feet and it caused Regina to have to practically manhandle her towards the vehicle, as they hadn’t come all this way to get stopped now.

Emma got that the kid was scared, but fuck, they’d have to explain it later. They really didn’t have time to give her assurances right now.

“Let’s go!” she exclaimed, slamming her car door and shoving the keys into the ignition. In her peripheral Emma could see the guards catching up, but with one hard shove Regina had Dorothy sprawling into the backseat, before getting in right behind her.

“ _Drive!_ ” she ordered before she even had the door closed, and Emma peeled out so fast she left skid marks on the pavement. 

“Jesus, what did you do, _kidnap_ her?” Neal asked as he looked over his shoulder at the state of the girl. She was practically shaking with fear, tears now streaming down her cheeks.

“Well it wasn’t like I was left with a lot of options,” Regina snapped, not about to get lectured by _him_ of all people. “Those incompetents kept spewing nonsense about paperwork, running me around in circles so they could no doubt confirm my story, which in case you’ve forgotten, _was not true!_ So yes, when I saw Dorothy pass by wearing those damn shoes I did what I had to do. And it wasn’t like I was taking her from some kind of safe house; they had the poor child under _psychiatric watch_ for Christ’s sake, just because she told them her name!”

“Yeah, well, in this world she’s supposed to be fictional,” Emma reminded her. “Of course they were gonna think she was delusional.” She glanced in her rearview mirror then, making sure that they weren’t being followed, before allowing her eyes to connect with Dorothy’s through the reflection of the glass. 

“Hey,” Emma greeted softly, trying to give the girl a sense of comfort now that they looked like they were safe; at least, for the time being. She was sure they took down her license plate number though, so that feeling probably wouldn’t last long. “We’re the good guys, okay? We’re gonna take you home. Do you know who I am?”

Dorothy sniffled, and God, Emma didn’t really think she’d look like Judy Garland or anything, but she wasn’t expecting that she would be this tiny rail of a thing, redheaded, and covered head to toe in freckles either. Which then made her wonder if Regina had even gotten the right girl – as kids stole stuff from each other all the time in the system – but those worries dissipated as soon as Dorothy nodded her head.

“The Savior,” she whispered, looking at Emma as though _she_ was the one that was some kind of mythical creature. It was kind of disconcerting, but Emma responded with a soft smile anyway.

“Yeah,” she admitted, still finding that title weird, as she never really felt like much of a Savior. “And I know what it’s like to be stuck in a place like that, okay? And even though we came for your slippers, we’re not going to just take them and leave you here. We’re gonna bring you back with us; bring you back to the people who care about you. So… don’t be afraid, okay? I know getting escorted outta there like that by Regina probably warrants a freak out, but she’s not going to hurt you. None of us are; we’re here to help.”

Dorothy swallowed hard, trying to combat her instinct to fear being grabbed out of nowhere by the Evil Queen that had cursed her, cursed them all, and side-glanced Regina warily. The brunette, now having a chance to breathe after her rapidly on-setting panic of being caught, finally gave Dorothy an apologetic smile.

“I’m… sorry,” she hesitantly told her, as though she were afraid that her apology wouldn’t be taken well, just because of who she was. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, but we had to leave quickly. Did I… did I hurt you at all?”

Dorothy pursed her lips and shook her head, looking so much younger than her years. If she had once been a confident girl, she certainly wasn’t now. But then again, getting thrown out on her ass in a world she barely knew anymore, all while being held up by social services and being told she was crazy just for being honest about who she was… well, Emma couldn’t really blame her. That was probably a lot to deal with, and God, the blonde’s heart ached for the girl. Gold was such a _bastard_ for doing this to her; Dorothy really didn’t deserve it.

The redhead’s eyes landed on her shoes then, her brow furrowing as she asked, “How… how do you expect to use my slippers though? Their magic doesn’t work in this world; I’ve already tried. I don’t… I really don’t think there’s a way back.”

“You just let us worry about that, dear,” Regina told her, her voice affectionate in an attempt to put her at ease. Dorothy still didn’t look all that thrilled about sitting next to the Evil Queen though, so Regina sighed softly, probably realizing it was foolish to even bother, and looked towards Emma. “We’re probably going to have to find somewhere to stash the car,” she told her. “No doubt the police are already looking for us.”

“Yeah, I know; I’m on it,” Emma answered, turning on her blinker and checking her rearview mirror before turning off the main road. She really didn’t know this area at all, but hey, if there was one thing she and Neal were good at it, it was running; and between the two of them, she knew they would be able to at least find _something._

[x]

“A parking lot?” Regina asked disbelievingly as Emma pulled into the twenty four hour Wal-Mart the next town over. “I thought we were going to hide this eyesore, not—”

“Relax, I know what I’m doing,” Emma told her impatiently, before turning off the ignition and looking over at the man sitting next to her. “Tool kit’s in the trunk.”

“Got it,” Neal replied, without needing anymore instruction than that as he climbed out of the car. Regina just sighed heavily, not particularly enjoying being left out of the loop. Emma resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the woman’s irritated demeanor though, and turned around to explain.

“If I have to leave my baby behind, I’m not about to let it get impounded by the cops. Hiding in plain sight is a lot better, trust me; people are in and out of this store twenty four seven, it’s doubtful anyone will notice a singular car in a parking lot _this big_ that is nearly always full, regardless of it being bright yellow. Normal people, by nature, are pretty damn self-absorbed, and really aren’t all that observant.”

“Then what on earth is _he_ doing?” Regina asked, nodding her head towards Neal, who was rifling through the trunk.

Emma pursed her lips, knowing how this was going to sound. “He’s… uh, changing the license plate.”

Regina’s raised a singular eyebrow at that information.

“Look, before you get all judgmental on me, it’s a precaution, okay?” Emma explained, sighing softly at the look Regina was giving her. It wasn’t like it was any secret that both of them had knowledge in this area, damnit. “They’re gonna be looking for these plates, so if we take an out-of-stater’s and ditch ours, it’s doubtful the other owners will even notice until they’re far away from here. Besides, most people tend to assume the shit just fell off in transit anyway, especially if they were old and beat up, and rarely even bother reporting it missing.”

“You’re forgetting something, dear,” Regina told her, apparently thinking she was one step ahead of the people who actually knew what they were doing. “The police are going to run your plates, if they haven’t already; that will give them all of your information, and while it’s true they cannot find Storybrooke, it will no doubt pose a problem for us once we move.”

Emma shifted her gaze. “Yeah… no, that’s—it’s fine.”

Regina, sensing that the blonde wasn’t telling her something by her shifty demeanor, asked, “ _How_ , exactly? Because if you have some way of guaranteeing that this little… _extraction_ won’t be traced back to us, I would like to know what it is. Call it a comfort, if you will.”

Yeah right. In the end, none of it would land on Regina anyway. Still, what she did effected Henry, which Emma supposed in turn effected Regina, so the blonde sighed softly before admitting something she really didn’t want to. “My… uh, information isn’t linked to the plates. Never has been.”

“And why is that, dear?”

Emma chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, shifting in her seat before mumbling underneath her breath, actually sounding a little ashamed of herself, “Cause the car’s stolen…”

Regina exhaled a judgmental sigh before propping her elbow up on the door in a huff. “Of course it is. Why did I even bother to ask?” Scraping her nails over her scalp, Regina shook her head and told her, “You really should just allow me to buy you a new car, Miss Swan. This… _thing,_ is not worth the risk, I assure you. And if you actually think that I’m going to allow you to tote our _son_ around in a stolen vehicle, you have another thing—”

“Oh my God, just lay _off,_ ” Emma snapped, sick of getting shit on because of her perfect car. “I love it, and it’s not going anywhere; just deal with it. And I stole it ten years ago, so really, I doubt the original owners are even still looking.”

Regina didn’t comment after that, but still did not look happy. Emma sighed heavily, turning her attention to her rearview mirror to check on Neal’s progress. She just didn’t want to have to listen to Regina’s car issues right now; they really had way more important things to deal with. Besides, she was sure this wouldn’t be the last she heard of it anyway, so it wouldn’t kill Regina to put the conversation on hold.

After a while Neal knocked on her window to signal it was done, and Emma looked back at her two passengers. “Alright, everyone out; it’s go time.”

The group of four left the parking lot to head across the street to the woods, where hopefully they would find themselves out of view from anyone who might be watching. Emma hated leaving her bug behind, but she knew the likelihood of Dorothy’s shoes being about to transport a car were slim to none. As it was already, they were merely guessing that it could take more than one person, and fuck, that was gonna really suck if it turned out they were wrong.

“Alright, so… how does this work?” Emma asked Dorothy once they were successfully away from the populous. “Do we hold hands or something?”

“I would assume so,” Dorothy answered, though didn’t really look too sure herself. She shifted her weight between her feet for a moment before telling them, “But I still don’t understand how you expect them to work, when I’ve tried countless times with no result.”

“Emma and I have access to magic, dear,” Regina explained, holding out her hand in offering. Dorothy hesitated for a moment before taking it, and the two other people followed suit. “According to Rumpelstiltskin, we should be able to activate them by our combined power. I suppose we’ll see if he’s correct.”

Dorothy didn’t look all too convinced, but nodded anyway before closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and squeezing their hands. “There’s no place like home,” she began chanting softly, clicking her heels in an attempt to make them work as Regina began syphoning magic from Emma, assuming that it would jump start the slippers’ power.

However, nothing happened.

“Fucking hell,” Emma muttered, growing frustrated by how much of a failure of a plan that was. “Now what? If the slippers don’t work, then—!”

“Oh, calm down,” Regina chastised her, looking at Emma as though she was nothing but an irate toddler on a tantrum. “We’re hardly out of options. Perhaps they won’t work because _she_ is not the one who possesses magic.”

“So then you wear them,” Neal suggested, but Regina practically rolled her eyes at what she took as ignorance, instead of just simply being unaware of their situation. Emma scrunched up her face in light protest, knowing where this was going.

“It’s not _my_ magic that works here,” Regina told her, as though just the mere fact that Neal even opened his mouth to speak irritated her to no end. “Emma is the one made of True Love, the only thing strong enough to exist outside the boundary; I’m merely the one that’s able to wield the power she holds. _She_ is the source, I am just the tool.”

“Yeah well, half of that sounds right at least,” Neal muttered under his breath, which made Regina’s eyes flash as her jaw dropped in offense.

Christ.

“Alright, alright!” Emma interrupted, putting her hands up to ward off the impending bitch fight between the two of them. “Everyone just relax for a minute and lemme try the shoes; we don’t have time for drama right now.”

Regina and Neal continued to shoot daggers at one another while both Dorothy and Emma removed their shoes, trading with one another. After stumbling a bit and needing to lean on Neal to get the damn things on, Regina’s expression only darkened further, causing Emma to sigh heavily. God, that was just the way she had started _falling;_ it wasn’t her fault. Personally she was just glad she didn’t end up face first in the dirt, because that would have been really freaking embarrassing. 

And as it was, she already felt like an idiot with these flashy things on.

As they all began to take one another’s hands again, Emma flushed lightly at how ridiculous she felt and asked, “Do I really have to say the thing?” Because Jesus, this was just weird.

“I think so; that’s what I was told anyway,” Dorothy answered, shrugging lightly, because in the end, she barely knew how they worked either. “You have to close your eyes, click your heels three times, and repeat it until you find yourself back home.”

Emma exhaled a breath, feeling like an idiot but resigned to do it anyhow. If this was their best shot, then she had to do what she had to do, right? Closing her eyes, she squeezed Regina’s hand to let her know she was ready, before clicking her heels and beginning, “There’s no place like home.” It took a lot of effort to resist rolling her eyes at herself; she sounded ridiculous. “There’s no place like—”

Neal, however, did not have that much self-control, and snorted at her awkward display.

“ _Neal!_ ” Emma exclaimed furiously, opening her eyes to glare at him. Jesus, there was a lot of pressure on her already, and he wasn’t making this any damn easier. “Do you wanna get punched in the face again? Cause I swear to God, you’re getting close.”

Regina smirked with satisfaction at that information, no doubt having wondered why the man’s face was bruised. Apparently she approved.

“I’m sorry,” Neal responded, although was still chuckling at her expense. “Really, just—continue. I’ll try not to look at you or something.”

Emma sighed heavily, the breath of air blowing a strand of hair away from her face before she turned her gaze away from him, looking at Regina momentarily before closing her eyes. After clicking her heels for a second time, Emma tried to concentrate on Storybrooke, on her home; Henry, her parents, her friends. “There’s no place like home,” she began again, feeling Regina access the magic from within her. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…”

Emma let out a yelp of surprise when suddenly it felt like she was being ripped from the earth, and all she could do was hold on to Regina and Neal as hard as she could as the world twisted and spun around them. Though the feeling must have only lasted for a few seconds, it was still enough to disorient all four of them as they landed in a heap on the hard wood floor; Emma sprawled half on top of Regina and Neal, and Dorothy atop her. 

Well, as far as landings went, that was entirely less than graceful. 

Regina groaned in pain and Emma swore, rubbing the back of her neck where Dorothy had elbowed it in her landing. None of them had really seemed to distinguish yet where they had ended up however, at least that was until the sound of feet echoed off the floor as more than one person ran over to them in one hell of a hurry.

Mary Margaret’s gasp filled the room. “Oh my God…!”

“ _Moms?!_ ”

**TBC…**


	23. Return

**CHAPTER TWENTY THREE  
Return**

Regina barely had time to even stand before she got hit by a body at full speed, Henry practically catapulting himself onto her in a fierce hug. Tears immediately sprung to her eyes at the gesture, her fingers fisting in her son’s shirt as she took in the love that Henry felt for her; that even after everything, Regina still feared she didn’t deserve. But he was able to compartmentalize his mom vs. the Evil Queen far easier than Emma was able to do so between that and her lover, and God, it almost just seemed too good to be true; to actually feel _loved_ for one, short moment, without all the baggage that seemed to constantly drag her down.

Emma was smiling at them, and Henry turned to reach for her. The blonde came to him then, her arms wrapping tightly around both her son and Regina, and for a second, it almost felt like they were the family that they had once hoped for.

“Emma!” Snow cried, running towards her to take her daughter in her arms once Emma had released Henry. “Oh honey, I’m so glad you’re home.” Emma gave her a tight smile but returned the hug, despite how awkward she seemed to feel at the display of affection. Regina supposed that it must be even harder for her now, considering how she had recently begun to face the heart of the issues that she had with her parents.

While Snow fussed over her daughter and Henry moved from her grasp however, was when Regina finally realized where they had ended up. Her brow creasing in confusion, her gaze shot to Snow as she demanded, “Wait, what the hell are you doing in my home?” Because God, they had landed in her old _parlor,_ and she really hadn’t been expecting that.

And whether their current destination was solely because Emma’s request for ‘home’ brought her to Henry and her mother, or whether it was because for some reason, she also associated home with Regina, and the house that they probably all would have lived in together should things not have fallen to pieces, she didn’t know, but Regina was certain that the last thing she wanted to do was analyze it right now either. Therefore, she only focused on something she could actually _handle_ understanding.

“Why are you here at _all?_ ” Snow shot back, looking at Regina like she didn’t trust her intentions in the slightest; like, for some reason, she had manipulated Emma into coming back to a town where half its residents wanted to lynch her. 

“We needed her to get back, Mary Margaret,” Emma explained with a sigh, knowing this was going to happen. “It takes both of us to create magic, and we can’t access it unless we’re touching. So just… leave it for right now, okay? Please.”

Snow tensed her jaw, giving one last mistrustful look towards Regina before resigning to her daughter’s wishes. How long that would last though, Regina wasn’t sure. She doubted it would last more than ten minutes.

“Are you Baelfire?” Henry asked then, looking up at Neal with curiosity. Regina’s heart plummeted into her stomach and Emma looked at her ex sharply, her eyes pleading with him not to do this right now. 

They had just gotten back, emotions were running high, and there was already way too much going on. Henry needed to do this in a better environment, when things had calmed down some, and Regina swore to any God that was listening that if Neal started barreling off half-cocked about this whole situation, she would curse the bastard into a goddamn _toad._

“I…” Neal began, looking really overwhelmed with the sudden confrontation with the son he never knew he had. But he smiled at him, this tight little gesture meant to hide all the emotion he was feeling, and answered, “I am, kid; yeah. In this world though, I tend to go by Neal.” He chuckled lightly. “Baelfire’s kinda a mouthful for some people, you know?”

Regina began to panic that Emma had been _stupid_ enough to reveal Neal’s name when she lied to him, but Henry just grinned back and said, “Yeah, I get that. I’m Henry by the way.” He held out his hand, being the polite little gentlemen that Regina raised him to be, as Henry informed Neal, “Emma and Regina are my moms.”

Neal smiled, taking Henry’s outstretched hand. “Well it’s great to meet you, Henry. This where you live?” His eyes roamed the huge manor, looking really impressed. Regina just arched an eyebrow at him almost daring Neal to pretend like she hadn’t provided more than adequately for her son, but he just said, “Pretty sweet set up; looks like you’re a lucky kid.”

“Thanks, but it’s not my house anymore,” Henry told him, his lips turning down into a frown that made Regina’s heart break. “Not since… not since Mom had to move. Now I live with Emma. Grams and I were just here to pick up some more of my stuff, that’s all.”

Regina gave her son a tight lipped smile as she brushed the hair back from his eyes. “This is still your house, Henry,” she assured him, because despite her living there or not, that wouldn’t change. “And you and Emma are certainly allowed to stay here for as long as you wish, if that’s what you find you want.”

Henry’s eyes lit up at the prospect of being able to stay in his old home until he and Emma moved to a more permanent place outside the town, but Snow shot that idea down in an instant.

“This house now belongs to the town of Storybrooke, Regina,” she told her with a haughty attitude. “And Henry and Emma already _have_ a home, with us.”

“The hell it does!” Regina snapped, her eyes flashing with challenge. “If this house is no longer in my possession, then it passes to my _son._ I created this town, and everything in it, so if I say it belongs to Henry, then it damn well belongs to Henry!”

“Okay, whoa!” Emma interrupted, holding up her hands to try to stop a forthcoming argument. Both Regina and Snow looked _livid._ “Can we maybe hold off on arguing the legal rights to the manor until _after_ we’ve all had a chance to rest? Cause I don’t know about you guys, but that trip took a hell of a lot out of me, and I just wanna lie down.”

Emma really did look exhausted, now that Regina was paying attention. It took quite a lot of magic to activate the ruby slippers, and it looked like it ended up draining her. 

“Fine,” Snow said shortly, before turning to the girl that arrived with them. “Dorothy, right?” The redhead nodded, looking like she felt so very out of place amidst the dysfunctional family. “My husband found and contacted your friends a few days ago; they’re very relieved to hear that you’re alright. Would you like me to take you to them?”

“Yes, that’s—thank you,” Dorothy answered, her face lighting up with a hopeful smile. Snow returned it before turning back to Emma. 

“I’ll drop you and Henry off at the house, and… Neal, you said? Do you want me to bring you to your father?”

Neal shifted his weight between his feet for a moment before trying to shrug it off. “Uh, actually, if you could just… you know, point me in the direction of the nearest motel or whatever, that’d be good. Like Emma said, kinda wiped. I’ll see my Dad later.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want, then I’ll drop you and Regina off at the Bed and Breakfast—”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Regina asked, nearly laughing at the sheer audacity Snow had. “I will be staying in my _home_ until it’s time for me to leave, thank you. But you’re certainly more than welcome to think you have a say in that, if it makes you feel any better about yourself.”

Snow looked like she was about to retort, but it was Henry who exclaimed, “I wanna stay with my Mom!” before clinging to her like he was afraid Snow might very well _pull him off_ her.

Snow sighed heavily, probably trying to come off as sympathetic towards him, but only seeming frustrated. “Henry, that’s really not a good idea—”

“No, you’re gonna make her leave again!” Henry protested firmly. “So I’m staying with her until she has to go. I’m allowed to, right, Emma?” He looked up at the blonde pleadingly, and Emma gave him a soft, understanding smile.

“Course you are, kid.”

Snow looked disappointed. “Emma—”

“No, look, Henry’s right,” Emma told her mother shortly, turning towards her. “Regina isn’t gonna be here long, so the kid deserves to see her while he still can. And if it’s gonna worry you _that_ badly, then I’ll just stay with them too, alright?” A pause, then she immediately backtracked by the look on Snow’s face, “ _Him,_ I’ll stay with Henry; make sure he’s safe or… whatever, alright? But I really don’t want to do this now. I’m exhausted, so can we just talk about this… _everything_ , in the morning, please?”

Snow did _not_ look happy with the arrangement in the slightest, but tensed her jaw and muttered, “Fine,” since her daughter obviously didn’t want to discuss anything right now. Regina shot Emma a grateful smile as she held her son tighter towards her body, and Snow turned from them to address the other two people in the room, her voice terse. “Well… I suppose we should get going then.”

As they all began to file out, Emma called out, “Neal.” The man turned, and Emma gave him a slight head nod. “I’ll call when we figure out when to do… everything, alright?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” he answered, giving her a small smile before addressing his son. “Bye Henry, it was really cool to meet you.”

“You too!” Henry answered, a wide grin on his face as he bid all three of them goodbye with a wave. When the door closed behind them, Emma ruffled her hand in Henry’s hair, causing him to giggle.

“Well, kid, looks like it’s just the three of us now. And hey, don’t even worry,” Emma told him, kneeling down to get at his height in a gesture she had adapted from Regina. “I’m not going to let them take your mom from you anytime soon, okay? It’s your birthday in a week and a half, and I think it’d be better if she was there to celebrate with us, don’t you think?”

“ _Really?_ ” Henry asked, looking so excited that it shot a wave of emotion through Regina, causing her throat to become tight as she fought the urge to cry. She really hadn’t expected Emma to take that into consideration, considering with their original plan, the two of them should have already been moved out of Storybrooke by now. They hadn’t really had time to think of an alternate.

Henry looked up at her then, looking so incredibly _happy_ that Regina felt as though she may just burst from the feeling of it. “You’ll really stay?” he asked, so much hope for his entire family being together on his special day.

Regina smiled warmly at him, brushing the hair back from his eyes. “If Emma can make that happen, then of course I will, honey. I wouldn’t miss it.” Henry grinned, and Regina touched his chin affectionately before suggesting, “Now why don’t you go make up the guestroom for Emma, so she has somewhere comfortable to stay while she’s here.”

“She’s not gonna stay in your room?” Henry asked, trying to make the question sound innocent even though Regina could see right through it. He wanted to know if his little plan of getting his mothers back together was working, and it broke her heart a little.

“No, honey. I don’t think—”

“I snore,” Emma chimed in quickly, trying to ease their son’s unrest about their relationship with a lie. “It keeps her up, and you know how your mom needs her beauty sleep.” She smirked at him, but Henry just narrowed his eyes at her skeptically.

“Go on,” Regina encouraged with a hand on his back, trying to deflect the conversation. “There should be some clean sheets in the hall closet.”

Henry frowned at their avoidance, but did as he was told as he left the parlor, heading towards the stairwell. Emma’s eyes connected with hers and she shoved her hands in her pockets, shifting on her feet for a moment as she shot her a small, awkward smile. “Look, I know I probably shouldn’t have just… you know, _invited_ myself—”

But suddenly her words were cut off by a body pressing against hers, Regina’s arms wrapping around her midsection to give the woman a firm hug. Emma froze, clearly not expecting the gesture; and if Regina was being honest, she wasn’t really expecting to do it either, but her body seemed to just react to her emotions as she suddenly felt an overwhelming need to express her gratitude. Emma hesitated for a moment, pulling her hands out of her pockets before just letting them hover in the air, seemingly unsure what to really do before she finally exhaled the breath she had been holding, and allowed them to snake around Regina’s waist, accepting the closeness.

“Thank you,” Regina whispered, her breath tickling Emma’s neck as she fisted her hands in the other woman’s shirt. “Even if you’re unable to convince them to let me stay, thank you for wanting to try.”

“It’s his birthday, Regina,” Emma responded softly, resting her chin against the brunette’s shoulder. “I’m not a complete dick—”

“Still,” Regina told her, pulling back for a moment to look into the other woman’s eyes. Hesitation and uncertainty shown behind them at a touch that wasn’t born from anger or sexuality as Regina dusted her thumb across the contour of Emma’s cheek. “I know it’s been difficult for you, having to constantly be around me and be reminded of…”

Emma’s averted her gaze, and Regina released a soft sigh as she stepped back from her, allowing the woman the comfort of space.

“Just… thank you, for not trying to get rid of me at your first opportunity.”

Emma swallowed, still unable to look Regina in the eye as she tangled her fingers in her hair, backing up a few steps as she completely avoided the conversation at hand. “It’s, uh… been a long day, you know? So I think I’m just gonna—”

“Of course,” Regina replied, nodding her understanding. She didn’t wish to make Emma uncomfortable, considering how desperately she found she wanted her to stay, so Regina gave her a soft smile in parting before watching Emma trudge off towards the guestroom. 

And honestly, although they still had their problems, it gave Regina hope, to realize that despite having other options, Emma had chosen to stay here. She had chosen _her._ And maybe she didn’t do it because she wanted to fix their relationship, but it said something nonetheless, and Regina felt a warmth burning in the center of her chest as she dared to allow herself the belief that maybe, somehow, things might actually get better after all.

[x]

Emma had been so exhausted from the magic it took to send them back to Storybrooke that she slept straight through till morning, having finally being awoken by the sound of her cell phone chiming loudly, indicating the arrival of a new text message. After she picked it up and held it up to her face, squinting at the screen’s harsh brightness, Emma groaned as she noticed it was only one of seven; all of them from Mary Margaret. Really not wanting to deal with all of that just yet, Emma dropped the phone on the floor and arched her back to stretch her tired limbs, blinking the sleep from her eyes as she tried to make herself just as aware as she was conscious.

It was weird, being in Regina’s house again, even though she supposed it really wasn’t _hers_ anymore. Still, Emma had barely thought about it when she suggested to Mary Margaret that she just stay here, just wanting the woman to stop bitching about Regina spending time with Henry, but now that she was here it was… nostalgic; some of it good, but some of it really fucking terrible. Even still though, this place, it was— 

Emma sighed, sitting up against the pillows and running a hand through her tussled hair, trying to just organize her thoughts. She really needed to figure out how she felt about this before she made her way downstairs and began ‘playing house’ for the next week and a half with her son and the woman who had broken her heart.

In the end though, Emma just supposed that it was… well, for a long time, she simply had never believed she’d settle down anywhere. Emma never thought she’d have ties like a spouse and a kid, because that just didn’t seem like the direction her life was going in. And yeah, alright, Regina and her weren’t really _married_ or anything, but in the end it didn’t really matter, because they were bound by something so much stronger than some stupid piece of paper. Her blood tied her to Henry, but her _soul_ tied her to Regina. And Emma knew, that had things not fallen all to shit, _this_ was probably where they all would have ended up.

This very house probably would have become their family home.

And that thought caused Emma’s heart to ache, because all she wanted her whole life was to have a family. And this place was the closest she ever felt to feeling like she had one, and maybe a part of her just desperately wanted to immerse herself in it, even if, at the end of the day, all it ended up being was complete bullshit. Because them trying to find some sense of normalcy right now? It bore a strong chance of being so much unhealthier than if Emma had just allowed Henry to stay here without her.

But at the same time, Emma really didn’t want to leave. She wanted to convince herself that the only way her mother would allow this was if Regina had supervision, and fuck, that made everything so much more complicated; mostly for reasons that she knew she didn’t have the emotional capacity to analyze and deal with right now.

All Emma knew was that she didn’t want to be miserable anymore, and pushing Regina away… it hadn’t fixed things at all. In fact, all it really did was make things even worse.

And in the end, that was enough to convince Emma not to run again.

Pulling herself out of bed, Emma resigned not to think too hard about all of this right now, because she had promised herself one thing at a time. And realizing that it was probably better that she stayed? That was her one thing. So Emma grabbed her cell phone off the floor, flipping through her text messages from Mary Margaret as she exited the guestroom and descended the stairs (‘I know you think Henry staying with Regina is the right thing, honey, but…’ lecture, lecture, lecture for five other texts, and then finally a ‘Maybe it would be better if we discussed this face to face, could you meet me at Granny’s later for lunch?’) before heading towards the kitchen so she could grab herself a cup of coffee.

Because really, she wasn’t even gonna _try_ to deal with her mother until she had some caffeine in her.

The smell of food assaulted her senses as Emma’s bare feet padded across the foyer, but once she entered the kitchen she found herself stopping short, suddenly experiencing emotional whiplash at the sight that confronted her. 

Regina was facing the stove, her back towards Emma as she flipped a pancake over on the griddle. But that wasn’t all; there were also eggs and bacon in separate fryers, the coffee was already brewing, and a second later the toaster popped, tearing Regina from her task on the stove to grab the bread and put it on a plate. But it wasn’t any of those things that currently held Emma’s undivided attention. No, that was reserved solely for the little cookie cutters that Regina had laid out on the far edge of the counter – hearts and stars and those damn dinosaur shapes that Emma found she loved for stupid, childish reasons – because they… Jesus, just the sight of them made Emma want to cry due to a feeling she feared to name.

“You’re…?” she tried, but the word just came out soft and trailed off into nothing. It was enough to grab Regina’s attention though and she spun around, surprised by Emma’s presence in the kitchen.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly looking kind of awkward about having an audience. “I… didn’t think you were up yet. Henry’s still—”

“Making pancakes,” Emma finally managed to finish, her voice sounding distant even to her own ears. Her heart felt as though it had expanded twice its size in her chest, pushing the breath out of her lungs. She hadn’t really expected the sight of something so damn _simple_ to resonate so deeply within her, but it had. It symbolized something that wasn’t lost on her, and Emma wasn’t really sure how to feel about that, because she was sure it wasn’t lost on Regina either.

Especially because the woman seemed a little flustered by Emma’s blunt, disbelieving statement, and tried to downplay it with, “Among other things, dear. Eggs, bacon, toast…” Regina turned, flipping the bacon over with a spatula before explaining, “I merely… with all the instability Henry has been subjected to because of us, I thought that perhaps he could do with a normal—”

But Emma was still stuck on one singular thing. “With _shapes._ ”

Regina bit down on her bottom lip as she no doubt tried to assess if this entire thing was being well-received or not, as Emma’s tone didn’t really paint the clearest of pictures. “Yes, well, I… remembered this morning that a week had passed since you stopped drinking and even if you may not find it to be a big deal, I think it’s something worth celebrating, so I… well, considering that I’m quite aware that you prefer these silly little shapes, I just thought that perhaps—”

But Regina wasn’t able to finish her sentence, because everything Emma had been feeling seemed to process entirely too quickly for her brain to catch up with, and suddenly Regina’s back was pressed up against the countertop, her face becoming trapped in Emma’s hands as she kissed her fiercely on the mouth. It caught Regina so off guard that she dropped the spatula, but within moments she fell into the feeling, her fingers holding tight to Emma’s waist as she kissed her back with as much emotion as she was being given, a breathy sigh of contentment dusting across the blonde’s lower lip in a way that, God, felt so dangerously familiar that it frightened the hell out her.

Because this wasn’t born from pain; it wasn’t born from need, or from desperation. It came from the part of Emma that loved Regina more than she had ever loved anyone, without the added weight of baggage. It felt like how they were _before_ ; just her kissing Regina because she loved her, and not because Emma felt like she needed something from her. So yes, that absolutely terrified her, because Emma found it was such a terribly addictive feeling.

And, well, she seemed to have a bad habit of drowning beneath the weight of her addictions as of late.

They broke when Emma leaned her forehead against Regina’s, tilting her chin just enough to still feel the other woman’s labored breathing against her lips. “Stop,” she pleaded, because her fear was the only thing that Emma felt able to voice in that moment.

Regina’s brow creased, her fingers threading through blonde hair. “What…?”

“Being perfect,” Emma breathed, her eyes still closed because she didn’t know how to face Regina in that moment. She felt too much and wasn’t sure how to handle it, as it was such a harsh contradiction to the anger and bitterness that usually resided within her. “Just _stop._ It makes everything harder.”

“I’m… sorry,” Regina stammered, her tone revealing her conflicting feelings she felt as she attempted to follow Emma’s erratic emotional guidance. She stepped away from her then, believing that was what Emma wanted, and tried to explain, “I just thought—perhaps this was a bad idea. I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” Emma told her, grasping Regina’s wrist in her hand as she pulled the woman towards her, trying to make sense of the senseless. “I didn’t—I don’t… want you to stop. I just… I obviously have no fucking clue what I’m supposed to feel anymore, so I just need you to—”

“Emma,” Regina interrupted, her brow creasing in guilt and sympathy as she gently touched Emma’s chin with her thumb and forefinger. “I honestly didn’t mean to overwhelm you. It was just supposed to be breakfast, that was all.”

“It wasn’t,” Emma corrected, finally allowing her eyes to catch Regina’s. “And you know it wasn’t. When you were… when you basically tore me a new asshole the other day, you mentioned—”

Regina shifted her gaze, guilt crossing over her face, because she did know. Emma didn’t understand why she was trying to hide her motives when they were plainly obvious. But as Regina turned to grab a clean spatula and tend to her food that was still on the stove – some of it starting to smell like it was burning – she admitted softly, “I just… miss it; seeing you happy, feeling that way myself.” 

After placing a few darker than normal pancakes on a plate and starting her attempt at salvaging the eggs, Regina continued softly, “I didn’t mean to emotionally manipulate you. And if that’s what it felt like, I’m sorry. I really had no idea that it would elicit that kind of reaction from you; I just… did it as a celebratory gesture, and because I really believed you would enjoy it.”

“I did… _do,_ ” Emma assured her, since Regina started to sound so terribly unsure of herself, and upset with the decisions she had made. “Regina…” A hand touched the small of the brunette’s back then, coming to rest behind her as Emma admitted, “I fucking love that you did this, okay? I do. But that’s… that’s kinda the problem.”

Regina pursed her lips as she began placing the scrambled eggs on the plates she had set out. “…I see.”

Emma sighed, because she knew Regina didn’t at all; and Jesus, she was probably expressing herself all wrong. “No, you don’t,” Emma told her as she leaned against the countertop. “It just… you know, reminds me of _before_ – this whole moment does really; breakfast and… whatever – but it’s not, it’s not fucking like how it was at all, and if I allow myself to get caught up in it, it’s probably just as bad as when I suppressed loving you so I could try to hate you instead. I mean, it’s basically just us pretending again, isn’t it? And we said we weren’t gonna do shit like that anymore.”

Emma tangled her fingers through her hair, watching Regina place the bacon on the plates next, and continued, “So I’m just trying to find this stupid… I don’t know, _balance,_ that probably doesn’t even exist, but every time I go too far one way or the other it fucks with me because I know that’s not right; that we can’t be _that way_ or _this way_ because everything is such a goddamn clusterfuck, and—”

“Emma,” Regina interrupted, placing the spatula down on the counter before sharply turning towards her with a heavy sigh. “You really need to relax.”

Emma shot her a disgruntled look. “Great, _thank you_ , Regina, for belittling my—”

“I’m not trying to belittle anything,” Regina told her patiently. “But your insistence of trying to feel everything at once is the entire reason you fell apart in the first place. I understand not wishing to forget things in lieu of feeling an emotion, but forcing yourself to feel so conflicted isn’t good for your sanity either.”

She gently touched her chin then, giving Emma a soft, encouraging smile. “It’s okay sometimes, to just live in the moment,” Regina reminded her. “It’s _okay_ to feel happiness, even if you don’t think you should. Trust me, dear; I spent so much of my life miserable, and most of it believing I deserved to be that way. If you want to smile, then allow yourself to, because life, in general, is _terrible,_ Emma, and happiness isn’t something that’s guaranteed us.”

“And misery is?”

As Emma’s eyes caught hers, Regina shrugged lightly, exhaling a soft sigh. “In my experience, anyway.”

The blonde raised an eyebrow at that. “You’re really kinda shit at pep talks, you know?” Emma smirked, to let her know that she wasn’t trying to hurt her with that, and Regina chuckled softly.

“Well, I’m sorry, dear, but I can only tell you what I know.” Her thumb dusted across the contour of her cheek then as Regina continued, “So please, don’t conflict yourself to the point of absolute insanity. If you find yourself happy for a second, just let yourself feel it. You’re allowed to, just as much as you’re allowed to feel anger and sadness; perhaps even more so, because it isn’t as though the emotions in your life have been very balanced as of late.”

“So tell me, dear,” Regina implored, tucking a piece of blonde hair behind Emma’s ear before tracing the outline of her jaw with her fingertips. “In this moment, what is it that you feel?”

Emma’s skin flushed lightly at the woman’s loving touch, her heart beginning to pound lightly beneath her ribcage as she took in the sweet thing that Regina did for her this morning, and how gentle and caring the other woman had always been to her, even if she didn’t deserve it, and so Emma finally breathed out without thought, “I feel like I want to kiss you again.”

Regina smiled softly before beginning to move towards her, and Emma allowed her eyes to flutter closed. But Regina’s lips landed gently on her cheek instead, the gesture unexpected, but not unpleasant as it shot sparks through her skin like lightning. “Not what I meant,” Emma murmured softly, feeling Regina move away from her before she allowed herself to open her eyes.

“I know,” Regina whispered, her thumb dusting softly over Emma’s bottom lip for a moment before allowing her hand to drop. “But we tend to get caught up in the moment, dear, and hardly ever kiss just to kiss. Henry will be awake soon, and I wouldn’t want—”

“Him to walk in on me taking his mom up against the kitchen counter?” Emma finished for her flatly, like it was irritating that Regina assumed it would lead to sex, even though in all truth, that really _was_ what tended to happen more often than not. Regina raised an eyebrow at her tone.

“That, along with that fact that I’m certain if you touched me just because you loved me, and not because you were merely trying to use me, that it would cause you a lot of unrest later.” Emma averted her gaze, knowing that was probably true, and hating how that made her sound. But Regina tangled her fingers in the blonde’s hand, coaxing her to look at her as she told her, “And that’s okay, because you’re not the only one it would bother. I… I tried so very hard to show you how sorry I was, Emma, how much I loved you, and yet for a long time you did nothing but repeatedly spit in my face. And even if I deserved it, that doesn’t change that fact that it hurt me, and made me feel so completely worthless at times. So no, I wouldn’t want you to touch me like that either, because it would feel like a lie.”

Distress crossed Emma’s face at those words, the guilt causing her heart to feel like it was shredding within her chest. “Regina…”

“No,” Regina interrupted, placing her fingers on Emma’s lips. “Don’t apologize. I don’t want to hear it right now, because I really don’t think I’ll believe it genuine because of how angry a part of you still is at me. Our relationship isn’t fixed, Emma, not by a long shot, but we’ve made progress. _That’s_ what’s important, and so I don’t want to ruin it by immersing in something we both know is temporary, because all it’s going to do is make us turn and run again. So this, right now? It’s… it’s enough for me, and I hope it’s enough for you.”

Emma understood that, but there was still something that didn’t make sense to her. “But you told me to live in the moment,” she reminded her. “And aren’t all moments temporary?”

“Yes, but what I’m telling you is to allow yourself to feel that particular emotion,” Regina gently explained. “Be happy; love me, even, if you wish… just don’t do something during that time you know that we’ll both regret once the moment has passed, because our actions and the consequences thereof are what haunts us, Emma, not our feelings.”

The blonde looked up at her for a moment, wondering when the hell the Evil Queen became the _rational_ one in their relationship, but nodded her understanding anyway. So Regina smiled at her, squeezing Emma’s hand tightly in her own, before leading the woman over to the food that was lain out on the counter.

“Good. Now come pick out what shapes you want me to cut your pancakes in, dear, before everything gets cold.”

[x]

“You must be cheating somehow,” Regina grumbled, frustrated at how badly she was losing this damned game. “How is it that you’re in first and I’m struggling just to pull up to seventh?”

Henry smirked, his eyes still glued on the television as his little character whizzed through the obstacles like it was second nature. “I’m not cheating, you’re just bad.” 

“I’m the one with a license!” Regina exclaimed, having figured before they started this little game that her adult experiences would give her the advantage. Clearly she had been wrong.

Henry laughed, apparently amused with how frustrated this was making her. “This is a video game, not real life, Mom,” he reminded her, just before his kart flew past the finish line and he dropped his controller, pumping his fist in the air. “Winner!”

Regina’s nostril’s flared, the competitive streak in her endlessly annoyed at this point. “This is a terrible game. I don’t know why I allowed Miss Swan to buy this for— _oh for Christ’s sake!_ ” she exclaimed, trying to suppress the urge to throw her controller across the room when she sped right off the road and into the water.

Henry laughed like it was the most hilarious thing he had ever witnessed, and despite her annoyance, Regina couldn’t help but smile softly at the sound of it. It had been so very long since Henry wanted to spend time with her that she cherished any moment she had with him, even if it was doing something as mindless and _frustrating_ as Mario Kart.

Regina paused the game however once she heard the front door opening, and within moments Emma was coming into the living room to bear witness to her failure. The blonde’s eyebrows nearly got lost in her hairline as she took in the sight before her. “Whoa, when did hell freeze over?”

Regina rolled her eyes, exhaling a haughty scoff. “I _do_ know how to have fun, you know,” she defended. Her nails clicked against the controller in annoyance though, remembering how terrible she was at it as she amended, “Although why anyone would actually find this game to be _fun_ is beyond me, but Henry seems to enjoy it, so no matter…”

Emma smirked, her eyes connecting with their son’s. “She losing?”

Henry laughed. “Badly.”

As Regina narrowed her eyes at being mocked, Emma chuckled before telling him, “Well, I gotta grab your mom a sec so we can talk about something, but I promise afterwards I’ll come back and give you a _real_ challenge, kid.”

Henry’s face brightened. “Okay!”

Regina scoffed as she got up off the couch, shooting Emma a glare. “It is hardly my fault that I spent my free time mastering more important endeavors than driving a silly kart around a television screen.” Henry just sniggered behind her, and Emma rolled her eyes as she led her from the room, knowing that Regina was sore about finding that she wasn’t good at something. 

“If it bothers you that bad, you know, I can give you pointers,” she suggested as they made their way into Regina’s study.

“Believe me, dear, it _really_ doesn’t matter to me at all.”

“Right,” Emma responded disbelievingly, then shrugged. “Well, the offer still stands. It’s really not that hard once you get the hang of it, you know. And what character you choose actually has a lot to do with it, because the heavy weight ones tend to have more control, but go slower, whereas the light weight ones—”

Regina crossed her arms over her chest as she leaned against her desk, interrupting her with a forced, irritated assessment of, “You’re like an overgrown toddler sometimes, do you know that?”

“Yeah, well, I might be an overgrown toddler, but I could still wipe the floor with _your_ ass if I wanted to, and I’m pretty damn sure that’d bother you more than when Henry beats you.” Emma smirked, because she knew she was right, which was why Regina just scoffed and didn’t dignify her assumption with a response.

Instead she changed the topic with, “How did lunch with your mother go?” because Regina already knew that was the reason Emma wished to speak with her alone in the first place. At her mention of the topic however, Emma’s lip curled in distaste, which gave Regina most of what she wanted to know without her even having to say a word.

Which instantly made Regina panic, seeing as how Emma had originally gone to discuss her extended stay in Storybrooke with her mother. She tried not to allow pessimism to overwhelm her just yet, however Regina still found herself holding her breath, waiting for Emma’s response.

“I got lectured about my life choices for the better part of an hour, so how do you think?”

As Emma sprawled into the large armchair and scowled, Regina exhaled an impatient breath and responded, “Yes, well, were you really expecting anything different? The woman despises me.” 

The brunette pushed herself off the desk, a pointed expression on her face as she continued, “What _I’m_ more interested in, however, is if she’s willing to let me stay or not.” Regina’s face creased in distress and fear then, her self-control crumbling to nothing as she allowed her pessimism to take over. “I just… I really need to know if this is going to be my last day with my son, Emma. Please, just tell me.”

Emma’s eyes widened in surprise and guilt, apparently having not realized until right then that she hadn’t ordered things in the best priority. “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t—” But the blonde shook her head, not wanting to waste more time by apologizing, and immediately tried to ease Regina’s fears with, “It’s alright; I convinced her to let you stay. But it, uh… might also come with a condition, which I doubt you’re going to enjoy.”

Regina felt a weight being lifted from her chest at those words, and she finally allowed herself to relax. It didn’t matter what the condition was, really, just so long as she would be allowed to be around for her son’s eleventh birthday. “I’m not surprised,” she responded, taking a seat across from Emma and crossing her legs. “It’s not exactly in Snow’s nature to allow me to be happy for long.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, what is it?”

Emma sighed heavily, slouching in her seat and putting her foot up on the upholstery, until a disapproving click of Regina’s tongue caused her to roll her eyes and place it back down the floor. “House arrest,” she told her. “ _Again._ Basically, you take one step out of this house before Henry’s party, and she’ll escort you back over the line herself. On the bright side though, I get to be your jailer-slash-the new guardian of the magical hotspot, since I think the last thing Henry needs to see is people with _weapons_ standing outside our door twenty-four seven, ready to put you down if you so much as sneeze.”

Regina raised her eyebrows at the woman’s choice of wording. “Our door?”

Emma blinked, apparently not realizing what she had said until it was repeated back to her. “Your door; _the_ door—whatever,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand, not even bothering to correct herself anymore. “Anyway, _that_ suggestion didn’t go over so well either, but I, uh… kinda got her to deem it less important and move onto other things once I told her about Neal.”

Regina blinked in surprise and sat up straighter in her seat. “You actually told her? I had thought you were avoiding doing that.”

“Yeah, well, since we need to…” Emma hesitated for a moment, her gaze shifting towards the open door for a second before lowering her voice and continuing, “ _You know,_ I figured she was going to find out anyway. So fuck it, right? Might as well lay out all my dirty laundry on the table for her to pick through and bitch about.”

Regina’s brow furrowed. “You mean she didn’t welcome—” But she stopped, _her_ gaze now on the open door before she got up and crossed the room to close it. She didn’t want to risk Henry overhearing this conversation. “She didn’t welcome your first love back into your life with open arms?” Regina asked her again, once she had turned back towards the blonde. “I had figured she would accept him quite readily, as he could be used as an obstacle to put between _us._ ”

“Honestly, I figured she’d push him on me too once she found out, especially since he’s Henry’s father, but…” Emma shrugged haplessly. “Guess she’s not all that fond of the guy who knocked me up and left me to rot in jail; which I’m glad for, because I swear, if I had to deal with her trying to set me back up with him I might have just gauged out my left fucking eye.” She smirked then, finishing, “So congrats, on not being the only ex of mine that my mother hates.”

“So then why do you look so annoyed?” Regina asked, crossing the room to return to her seat. “Isn’t this the best possible outcome, given the circumstances?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. I just…” Emma sighed heavily, rubbing her temples with her fingers. “She was all _hurt_ that I didn’t tell her before this, and every time she tries to guilt me it just, God, it _pisses me off,_ cause fuck, _I’m_ hurt that she still has yet to even fucking say she’s sorry for abandoning me, but does she see me sitting there trying to guilt-trip her? No. Its bullshit, and I’m just tired of it.”

Regina pursed her lips, her face etching in sympathy. “Why haven’t you just spoken to her about it then? Surely—”

“Because I shouldn’t have to be the one to bring it up, Regina! That’s _crap!_ ”

Regina sighed softly at Emma’s outburst, but did not contradict her. She was right anyhow; that responsibility lay on her parents’ shoulders. Regina just wished they would pull their heads out of their asses and see that, because this was hurting Emma so much more than she let on. 

“Look, I… don’t want to talk about my parents anymore,” Emma told her, running her fingers through her hair as she averted her gaze. “Besides, I’ve been thinking, since… well, since you’re not gonna be going anywhere for at least a week, while we’re here we should probably… you know…”

Regina raised her eyebrows expectantly, not really understanding where Emma was going with this. “Probably what, dear?”

Emma sighed, looking like she felt stupid for even having to suggest this, but reluctantly finished with, “Probably go see Archie or something.” Emma let out a breath and straightened in her seat, trying to not look embarrassed by admitting that she, that _they_ , needed help as she told her, “I mean, you said yourself that he’s really the only one qualified. So maybe we should take advantage of that while we can.”

“You’re really…” Regina began disbelievingly, because while Emma had suggested it before, she hadn’t really thought that when the time came, the woman would keep that stance. Emma _hated_ therapy, almost as much as Regina did. “You’re really willing to try to fix our relationship?” 

Emma shrugged, unable to meet her gaze as she tried to be noncommittal about it. “Well we… I mean, we should, right? For the kid.”

“Right,” Regina agreed softly, even though by Emma’s unwillingness to meet her gaze, she strongly suspected it wasn’t just for Henry’s sake that she wished to do this. “For Henry; of course.”

In the end though, Regina supposed it didn’t really matter why Emma wanted to do it, just so long as she did. They had quite a lot of things that they still needed to deal with, so many feelings and problems they needed to work through, and even though Regina despised therapy with every inch of her being, she would be a fool if she thought they didn’t need it. Because despite the fact that they were able to get along a bit better now, they still did, _desperately,_ need a third party’s intervention, because there were still some things they didn’t know how to talk about on their own.

And so Regina smiled softly at her, trying to show her gratitude for Emma’s decision, and assured her, “I’ll make the appointment.”

**TBC…**


	24. Disclosure

**CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR  
Disclosure**

“I hate her!”

Regina’s heart clenched in her chest at her son’s words, and distress masked over her face at the sight of him in tears. She knew this wasn’t going to go well, but she had hoped he would have been a little more understanding of Emma’s side of it. Perhaps that was far too much to ask for however, as Henry was only ten years old, and really wasn’t emotionally capable of seeing things rationally when he was upset. Emma had barely had time to explain things to him before Henry had fled from the room, finding his mother in the study and flinging himself into her arms, just trying to find a sense of comfort after finding out he had been lied to about something that bore the chance of substantially changing his life.

“No, don’t say that,” Regina pleaded, kneeling down in front of him to wipe the tears from his dampened cheeks. “You don’t hate her, you’re just angry with her. And you have every right to feel that way, okay? You’re hurt that she lied to you, and that’s understandable. But please, honey, don’t say that you hate her, because you know Emma loves you more than anything, and if she ever heard you say that it would absolutely devastate her.”

“If she loves me, then why did she lie to me!” Henry exclaimed, distraught over Emma’s betrayal of his trust, and Regina’s eyebrows creased in guilt as she pursed her lips.

“Darling…” she began softly, brushing the hair from his eyes. “Sometimes adults lie to children to protect them. They lie because they _love_ you, and don’t want to see you hurt. And I think a part of you knows that, otherwise you never would have forgiven _me._ ”

Henry sniffled, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands. “She was supposed to be the good one,” he whispered, and his words tore a hole straight through Regina’s heart. “She was supposed to be the one who never lies to me. She’s the _Savior,_ she’s the—!”

“She’s _human,_ Henry,” Regina tried to explain, hoping how badly her son’s words had hurt her didn’t show in her expression. “And more than that, she’s your mother. Emma didn’t know then if Neal even wanted to be in your life. How do you think you would have felt should she have told you the truth, and you wanted to meet him, only to find out he didn’t want to meet _you?_ ”

Henry bit his bottom lip, but said nothing.

“She lied to you to protect you,” Regina told him, using her thumb to wipe away another fallen tear. “And it’s understandable that it hurt you, but you must also understand that she didn’t do it to be malicious. She just didn’t want to disappoint you; she didn’t want to see you hurt, like Neal hurt her. Can you understand that?”

Henry’s bottom lip trembled and he trapped it between his teeth, trying to calm himself down despite still being very hurt by what had happened. “How did he hurt her?” he asked finally, his voice soft and hesitant.

“Oh, honey,” Regina sighed softly, running her hands down his arms in a comforting gesture. “That’s something you’re going to have to ask Emma. That’s _her_ past, okay? And it wouldn’t be right if I was the one who shared it with you.”

Henry just meekly nodded, and Regina gave him a soft, encouraging smile as the floorboards creaked outside the half open door. Regina knew it was Emma, but didn’t acknowledge her right then, as her son’s distress took more of a priority.

“Just remember that you have a say in who you want to be in your life, and should you decide you don’t want to spend time with your birth father after what Emma tells you, you don’t have to. You’re certainly not obligated to in any way.” Henry nodded again, and Regina gently placed her knuckle under his chin, coaxing his eyes to rise from the floor and meet hers. “But if you _do,_ then that’s okay too. Neal may not be mine or Emma’s favorite person, but we won’t keep you from him if you want to see him.”

“Why?” Henry asked quietly, genuinely curious, if not a little suspicious. “You tried to keep me from Emma at first, so why aren’t you trying to do that with my dad?”

“Because, honey,” Regina answered patiently. “I’m… I’m _trying_ , very hard, to learn from my mistakes. And keeping you from Emma? That was a mistake. All it did was make you resent me, and that’s not something Emma or I want to happen this time around.”

“Okay,” Henry whispered, accepting her answer. He sniffled again, and Regina drew him into a hug, tangling her fingers through her son’s hair before kissing him softly on the forehead.

“Do you want to go talk to her?” Regina asked gently, but Henry just shook his head.

“Not right now,” he mumbled, holding tight to his mother in his arms. “Can we just… play games for a little?”

Regina’s gaze landed on the half open door, her eyes connecting with Emma’s as the woman stepped a little further into view, her arms hugging tight to her own form. Regina gave her a soft, apologetic smile, hoping that the blonde would realize that Henry just needed a little time to adjust and forgive, before turning back to her son and softly assuring him, “Of course, honey. Whatever you want.”

[x]

Emma tried not to let Henry’s reaction to the truth affect her, as she had been expecting something like this to happen, but it was hard. It twisted her insides and the guilt burned a hole in her heart as she remembered the look of complete _betrayal_ on her son’s face, and she hated herself for ever making him feel that way.

Emma had really thought she was doing the right thing by telling him that Neal had died, because all the man had done was disappoint and hurt her, and she desperately didn’t want the same thing happening to Henry should he have ever wanted to go looking for him. And yeah, maybe the ten years they spent apart allowed Neal to grow into something resembling a decent human being, but Emma hadn’t known that before. She could only go off of what she knew, but now she was second guessing her entire decision.

Maybe she should have just sucked it up and told the kid the truth when he asked. Maybe then Henry wouldn’t have ever had a reason to look at her like he didn’t know if he could ever trust her again. And maybe it was just a temporary reaction, maybe he’d get over it and forgive her, because hey, he seemed to have forgiven _Regina_ after all, but right now? God, it killed Emma inside. She hated it, and it made her feel like a terrible person, a terrible mother.

“Emma?”

The blonde looked up, taking in the concerned expression on Ruby’s face as the woman crossed the room to stand in front of her table. “What are you doing here?”

“Brooding,” Emma responded, trying to make it sound sarcastic, but the word fell flat, the truth in it winning out regardless of her intentions. Ruby raised her eyebrows.

“ _Here?_ ” Ruby questioned, motioning with her hands to indicate their current surroundings: The Rabbit Hole, the one damn place in all of Storybrooke that Emma really should _not_ find herself inside of. The brunette cocked her head to the side, this little sympathetic look on her face that Emma found she instantly hated. “You really think that’s the best idea?”

“Jesus, does _everybody_ know?” Emma asked, sounding exasperated to try to cover up the fact that her weakness being public knowledge was probably the most embarrassing thing she had ever felt. She tangled her fingers in her hair and slipped further into her seat in the booth, letting out a small sigh. “I just… I don’t know, am having an exercise in self-control, or whatever. It’s fine.”

Really, she just wanted to fucking prove to herself that she wasn’t as shitty of a person as she felt right then. Maybe it was dangerous, maybe it was stupid, but Emma had lasted a whole fifteen minutes without getting up to order at the bar, even though her hands were trembling in some kind of psychological throwback to what her body no longer physically craved, but her mind still desperately wanted. Still, _she was doing it._ And that was what mattered, right?

Apparently not.

“Yeah well, as much fun as watching you brutally torture yourself sounds, how about you hold off on that for a little while and come get some air with me instead?” Ruby suggested, tentatively holding out her hand in offer, as though she was trying to coax something back from off the edge of a building. But maybe that was the equivalent of what she was doing anyhow. “Come on, I haven’t seen you in weeks; let’s catch up.”

Emma hesitated, not sure if the voice screaming in her head not to go was her addiction or her strength just wanting a chance to prove itself. 

“Emma,” Ruby implored softly, looking so goddamn _concerned_ with her well-being that it filled the blonde with an overwhelming sense of shame. “Please.”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek, her eyes shifting to the bar for a moment before deciding that maybe complete masochism wasn’t the way to go, and took ahold of Ruby’s hand. Even if she could do this, even if she could sit here and prove to herself that there was actually something redeemable about herself, Emma didn’t want the people she loved to worry for her; she had had enough of that for one lifetime.

As Emma grabbed her bag off the seat next to her, Ruby gave her a soft smile. The gesture was returned to her as the two women exited the bar, hand in hand. The afternoon sun was bright and harsh, and Emma squinted in the face of it before untangling herself from Ruby and fumbling to get her sunglasses down from off her head. Ruby smirked.

“You smell better, you know.”

Emma snorted, pushing her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Thanks, it’s this new scent I’m trying called ‘sobriety’.”

“Yeah well, my nose thanks you for it,” Ruby told her, chuckling a little as she leaned against the side of the building, fiddling with the ties on her cloak. “You really have no idea how bad you used to reek. I mean, I love you and all, but it was pretty nauseating.” 

“Sorry,” Emma apologized, averting her gaze as she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. Her weight shifted between her feet before she shrugged, trying to downplay the severity of it. “Bad decisions, and all that. Shit happens I guess.”

“Yeah,” Ruby agreed, her tone softer as she looked at her friend in gentle sympathy. She noticed Emma’s awkward demeanor whenever her alcoholism was brought up however, and let the topic drop. “So Snow told me you got to wear the famous ruby slippers,” Ruby mentioned, her lips turning up into a small smirk at Emma’s disgruntled look. “How was that?”

“Awkward,” Emma began listing off, slumping against the wall next to her friend. “Draining. Kind of nauseating, and the landing really sucked.”

“Oh come on, you didn’t think it was cool?” Ruby nudged her with her shoulder, and Emma just shrugged in response.

“Stuff like that is apparently a lot cooler in theory than in practice,” she told her. “I mean yeah, it’s awesome that you can just click your heels and go anywhere, but the magic it used to make them work took a lot out of me. And besides,” Emma scowled, kicking up her foot to have it land on the wall behind her, “because we used those to get back, I had to leave my baby behind and that’s just…”

Emma sighed, shaking her head because she knew she sounded stupid. “Okay, I get like, big picture; we were able to get back this way and all that, and that’s great and what we wanted, but ugh, Ruby… I just _really_ miss my car.” 

The sentence came out like a childish whine, but god damnit leaving her car behind really sucked because she loved it more than anything; it was like an extension of who she was. Worse than that though, was that leaving it behind actually caused her and Regina _more_ problems; problems she didn’t think Regina had even realized yet and problems Emma didn’t know how to fix, but had been thinking about ever since they got back.

“And you know, the worst part about it isn’t even that there’s a chance that the cops might find it and impound it, since we basically kidnapped Dorothy from DHS and… actually never mind, that’s a long story, and not even the point right now,” Emma backtracked, waving her hand to dismiss it and move on. “The _point_ is that Regina’s Benz is still parked outside the motel room we were staying at before, so as of right now, neither of us have a car.”

“And Regina’s gonna have to get back somehow, because my parents won’t let her stay here forever, but it’s not exactly like Storybrooke has a car rental service or anything, so I really don’t know how the hell we’re gonna manage that right now,” Emma finished, sighing heavily as she leaned her head back against the brick wall. She scrunched up her face though, realizing she just went on a little tangent, and turned her head towards Ruby. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to just… go off like that. I’m just frustrated. I know you don’t care.”

“Of course I care; you’re my friend, Emma, so if you need to vent, then vent,” Ruby told her, looking at her a little strangely, like she didn’t understand how Emma could think otherwise. But it wasn’t like Regina was this town’s favorite person, so why would anyone care what made her life more difficult? But Ruby just asked, “Why doesn’t she just buy a used one or something? I think Billy has one he fixed up in his spare time. If you ask, he might sell it for a decent price; to her, probably not, but to _you…_ ”

Emma just shook her head and sighed softly. “We don’t… I mean, we don’t really have the money to spare right now, you know? I mean, my paycheck kind of sucks, and despite what everyone thinks, Regina’s funds aren’t unlimited. And since she can’t sell her house here, that leaves us with a lot less money to buy a new one with, and so buying a new car that we’re only gonna use once just to get to our other ones is—”

“Emma,” Ruby said shortly, her tone suddenly very serious as her gaze connecting with her friend’s. “You’re… saying ‘we’ a lot. You’re not planning on leaving _with_ her, are you?”

Shit.

“No, it’s just… a habit, I don’t know. I’m just trying to help her out, that’s all,” Emma quickly denied, because oh god, she didn’t want that news reaching her parents before she was ready to tell them, and that was preferably _after_ they had figured everything out with their living situations. 

“If you say so,” Ruby responded, letting it go despite the fact that she still looked skeptical. And Emma didn’t like that, because Ruby having thoughts like that might cause her to voice them to other people, and so turned towards the brunette imploringly.

“I swear, Rubes, I’m not—”

“Emma, you’re talking about her financials like they affect you,” Ruby reminded her, looking her square in the eye with a ‘no bullshit’ expression. “Everything you said was either ‘we’ or ‘us’, so you obviously view this whole situation as your problem as well. And I’m not gonna judge you if you’re back with her and want to start over as a family somewhere else, okay? I’m not. But just don’t lie to my face about it; I’m your friend and I don’t want you to just disappear one day without a word of goodbye, you know? That’d be awful.”

“No, it’s…” Emma tried, but she just exhaled a frustrated breath and ran her hand through her hair, feeling really guilty. God, why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut? Admitting this wasn’t something she wanted to do right now, but she didn’t want Ruby to think that she’d do something like that either.

Knowing she had to just be honest, Emma disclosed the truth with a soft sigh, “I swear to god, it wasn’t gonna be like that, okay? We just… God, I haven’t told my parents yet, and I just didn’t want you—”

“So you are leaving then.”

Ruby sounded really disappointed, and her tone caused Emma to hang her head, because this shouldn’t have had to come about by her friend dragging the truth out of her. “I don’t want to,” she admitted. “But… Henry, he needs her. He needs his mom, and if Regina can’t stay in Storybrooke, then neither can we. I don’t like it, _she_ doesn’t like it, as this was her home too, but that’s just… you know, it’s just the way it is. My parents banished her, so what else can we do?”

Ruby pursed her lips, lines of sadness etching across her face at the realization that her friend leaving Storybrooke meant she’d probably never see her again because of the town line. “Maybe they’ll reconsider Regina’s banishment, should they know they’d be losing you and Henry as well,” she suggested, but it didn’t sound like she even believed it herself. 

Emma really wished that were true, but… “The town would riot.”

“Yeah,” Ruby murmured, sounding incredibly disheartened. Regina’s banishment was her punishment for enacting the curse, and should that be retracted, it wouldn’t be received well at all. Nobody wanted Regina here, save Henry and herself. 

Ruby looked up at her, her lips pursed in a sad smile before holding out her arms to her. “Come here,” she coaxed, before wrapping the blonde up in a tight hug. “I’m really gonna miss you,” Ruby whispered, and Emma had to swallow the lump in her throat at the brunette’s words. She had never really had friends before, had people that cared, had a _home._ Storybrooke gave her all of that, and it tore her to shreds inside to have to leave it all behind.

“I’m gonna miss you too,” Emma breathed, hating that she had to say goodbye. This whole thing was just so incredibly fucked, and Emma wished it didn’t have to happen this way. But Henry, he was… he was the most important thing in the world, to both her and Regina, and they needed to do what was best for him. “I’m really sorry…”

“No, don’t be sorry,” Ruby told her, untangling herself from Emma’s arms to look her in the eyes. “You have to do what’s best for your child, I understand that. It just…” She sighed softly. “Well, it just really sucks that this is what that is, is all.”

“Yeah,” Emma quietly agreed. Trapping her bottom lip between her teeth, she looked down at the ground before requesting, “Look, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t—”

“I won’t,” Ruby promised her before she could finish, knowing exactly what she was going to say. “I won’t tell Snow. She might be my friend, but you are too, and besides, I think if anyone’s gonna tell her that you’re planning on shacking up with the Evil Queen—”

“It’s not like that,” Emma told her, turning her gaze upwards to once again meet her friend’s as she sighed. “We’re not… that’s not what we’re doing. I’m gonna have my own apartment.”

“Oh.” Ruby creased her brow then, before asking, “Are you… okay with that?”

Emma shrugged. “My idea, really.”

“No, I mean… I realize you’re just doing this for Henry, but if things aren’t any better between you guys, do you really think you should be—?”

“They are,” Emma interrupted, the words that tumbled out of her mouth sounding more eager to explain than she actually intended them too. Ruby’s eyebrows rose and Emma looked out towards the street, shrugging it off. “I mean, it’s not like how it was before. It’s not even close. But…” She sighed, shaking her head. “I don’t know, it’s complicated. Sorry, I just… I don’t really wanna talk about Regina right now; all it does is make my head hurt.”

Ruby nodded, understanding that. “Alright. But if you ever need an ear…”

“I know,” Emma responded, her lips forming into a small smile of gratitude. Ruby was the only one, it seemed, who hadn’t judged her relationship with Regina after the curse broke. It was a blessing Emma didn’t know she needed until she had it. “Thanks.”

Ruby gave her a soft smile in return, then looked down at her watch. “Damn, my shift starts soon, so I should probably…” She inclined her had in the opposite direction. “But hey, we should really try to have a girl’s night soon,” Ruby continued, before her smile turned a little sad, “you know, before you leave.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Emma responded, hoping she sounded more enthusiastic than she felt. As much as she wanted to hang out with Ruby one last time, it was bound to be a pretty depressing night. Saying goodbye was… it just wasn’t something Emma really did. She didn’t have attachments, and so when she up and left each town for another, it didn’t really bother her. But this… this did.

“You need a lift back to Regina’s?” Ruby offered, nodding her head towards the parking lot. “Since you’re car-less and everything.”

“Actually I gotta get down to the pawn shop,” Emma responded, motioning to the bag on her shoulder. “Need to drop something off for Gold. But if you don’t mind…?” Cause really, walking everywhere was starting to suck.

Ruby chuckled. “Not at all, come on.” 

As the two women began heading towards the parking lot, Ruby inclined her head towards the bag Emma was holding. “Okay, I have to ask though… what’s with the purse? Are you getting girly on me all of a sudden? Because I don’t really know what to do with that.” Her tone was playful and Emma’s face scrunched up in mild protest.

“It’s a _bag,_ not a purse, Rubes,” Emma defended, rolling her eyes; because please, like she would really carry a purse?

Ruby smirked at her insistence to the contrary as they neared her car. “Uh, hate to break it to you, but what you’re holding is a purse; a huge one, sure, but still a purse.” She studied it for a moment before suddenly stopping mid-stride, blinking heavily as she practically grabbed it off of Emma’s shoulder in near-shock. “Holy— and a wicked expensive one at that. _Versace?_ ”

Emma stared at her blankly, not really understanding the magnitude of the brand name. “It’s Regina’s,” she answered instead, because, well, _obviously._ “She had a ton of them in her closet, so I just grabbed the biggest one and left. What’s the big deal? Everything Regina owns is expensive.”

“Emma, these bags cost at _least_ two thousand dollars,” Ruby revealed, causing Emma’s jaw to drop at the information. Apparently there was expensive, and then there was _insanity._

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Who the hell would spend two thousand dollars on a goddamn purse? That’s just… ridiculously unnecessary.

“Really not,” Ruby answered, looking flabbergasted by just the sight of something like that. “You said she had a ton of them? Are they all brand names?”

Emma just held out her hands haplessly, because seriously, did Ruby really expect her to know something like that? Still, Ruby just pointed at the purse and told her, “Well ask her and find out, because if they are, that’s the solution to your money problems.”

“Solution? Ruby, I’m pretty sure this right here is the entire reason we even _have_ a problem.”

“Maybe,” Ruby admitted, but shrugged lightly, like it was of no matter. “Still, I’m telling you, if you sell those things on Ebay or something, you could easily buy a used car and not have it cut into your moving funds; vintage stuff like that usually goes for a lot.”

Emma raised her eyebrows at that, because yeah, that actually wasn’t a bad idea. Though why the hell didn’t Regina think of it? She remembered her saying that a lot of her possessions came with the curse, but these didn’t, right? They couldn’t have, because they didn’t exactly look like they were from the early eighties. So if Regina bought them at some point, she had to know exactly how expensive they were, and yet she just… _left_ them behind like they were nothing? Emma knew Regina couldn’t bring a lot when she moved the first time, but if _she_ had two thousand dollar purses hanging in her closet, that would have been the first thing she grabbed; cause seriously, _goddamn._

Emma tried not to feel bitter about the fact that Regina being well-off caused her to deem something _that_ expensive unimportant, but it was hard. Logically, Emma realized that most of Regina’s possessions, her money, were complete bullshit; just something the curse gave her to secure the façade, but even so, the lack of care Regina seemed to have for it all bothered her. Emma had basically straddled the line between poverty and stability for most of her life, had to work for every little thing she had, and Regina just… waved her hand and instantly created a more than comfortable life for herself.

God, it probably was stupid though, to even be jealous of something like that. Emma knew that Regina created the curse solely because she was so terribly unhappy, so of course she would give herself everything to try to achieve that. And could she really blame her? If Emma was in the same position, had the means and the motive, she probably would have too. In the end though, no matter how many expensive things Regina owned, no matter how good she tried to make her life seem, she still ended up feeling empty and alone. 

Apparently there was truth to the saying that money couldn’t buy happiness, but sometimes the selfish part of Emma just wished she at least had the chance to try.

Fuck it though, it didn’t even matter. The important thing was that Emma might actually have a solution for at least one of the problems in her life right in front of her, and that was a good thing, despite how she felt about it coming about.

And that had to count for something.

[x]

The bell above the pawn shop’s door chimed as Emma stepped through the threshold, the sound alerting the owner to her presence. Gold looked up at her from across the counter, and a familiar smile crept across his face that had always looked far more creepy than inviting. “Sherriff,” he greeted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Emma didn’t answer him. Instead she dug into her bag, pulling out the ruby slippers she had gotten from Dorothy before practically slamming them down on the counter in front of him. But as Gold’s eyes filled with greed and he reached for them, Emma immediately slid them away from his grasp. “Not so fast.”

Gold’s eyes flashed, not enjoying being toyed with. “Need I remind you, dearie, that those belong to me?”

“They belong to Dorothy,” Emma corrected, looking at him like he was stupid for even trying to play that card. “Hell, even Elphaba has more of a legitimate claim on them than you do. _But_ I’m willing to give them back to you… in exchange for a favor.”

Really, the last thing Emma wanted to do was give Gold back something that had this much power, but in the end, he was the only one who could help put this whole curse thing to rest. And, well, Emma knew first hand that Gold’s help didn’t come for free, hence the bargaining tool.

“Let me guess,” Gold drawled, leaning his arms on the counter as his gaze pierced hers. A smirk began to etch its way across his face, as though this entire interaction _amused_ him, and he continued, “You finally believe that it is, in fact, your precious Queen who was cursed, and nobly wish to save her from another lifetime of unhappiness. Am I wrong?”

Emma’s face soured at his tone; she didn’t like being mocked, and she enjoyed it even _less_ so when it was regarding her ties to Regina. “Could you do it or not?” she snapped in return, because even if that wasn’t what she originally came here to ask, it would be the next step should Regina’s fear turn out to be true.

“No.”

It was said so simply, so _uncaringly_ that it set Emma’s teeth on edge. “What the hell do you mean, _no?_ ” 

“I could find you a dictionary, if the word puzzles you, dearie.” 

Emma’s furious glare that followed his words made Gold chuckle as he moved to come around the other side of the counter. “A curse cannot be broken by just anyone,” he explained. “Only the caster has the power to reverse what it is that they have done, and as it was not I who cursed her, it is out of my hands.”

Emma exhaled a frustrated breath, “That can’t be the only way—”

“The death of the one who enacted it is, of course, another option,” Gold continued. “The curse will die with its caster. Outside of that and True Love’s Kiss though, I’m afraid—”

“Wait, what?” Emma questioned, the words that had fallen from the man’s mouth perplexing her to no end. “Then the curse theory is out the window, right? Because I’ve kissed Regina plenty of times since then, and nothing’s changed.”

“Wrong.” Gold told her, before a knowing smirk crossed his face. “Would I be incorrect in assuming that there is trouble in paradise, dearie?” His words were mocking, and Emma shot him a dark look.

“What does that have to do with anything? She’s still my True Love, that doesn’t just go away—”

“It has to do with _everything,_ ” Gold answered. “It isn’t enough to merely be bound to her; the first curse broke only because you had given the Queen your heart. Am I wrong in assuming you took that from her once you found out the truth?”

Emma pursed her lips into a tight line, guilt and anger and sadness beginning to burn in the pit of her stomach. “I love Regina,” she tried to defend, and even though it was true, it still sounded weak and pathetic. The love they held for each other now, it wasn’t like it was before. It was broken, tainted.

“You may love her, dearie; but the evidence suggests that you do not _truly_ love her,” Gold informed her, as though he were speaking to an ignorant child and it taxed him to do so. “Until you love everything that she is, until she loves everything that _you_ are, True Love’s Kiss will not work for you.” 

Well, great; they were probably fucked then, cause God knows how long it’d take them to work out their issues, and that’s if they even _could._

Emma sighed heavily, running her fingers through her hair. “Look, even if… even if that’s true, that still doesn’t rule out the fact that neither of us might even be cursed at all.” Gold looked amused by that theory, but Emma snapped, “I’m serious. I don’t care how plausible it is, we still don’t have proof; and until we have that, there’s no use even thinking about breaking a curse that might not even exist in the first place.”

“That is why you came then?” Gold asked, looking at her like she had set the bar unbelievably low. And maybe she had, but she had to deal with one thing at a time; and besides, even if she skipped ahead and acted on belief, it wasn’t like Gold could help in that area. “You want proof… in exchange for the slippers?”

“If you can give us that, yeah; then we can go from there.”

“Then you have yourself a deal, dearie,” Gold answered, smiling at her like he had just won some sort of prize. But fuck it, they needed to know, and it wasn’t like Regina knew how to test it, otherwise she already would have. “I do hope you realize, however, that I will need access to the Queen’s home; it is the only place magic resides.”

“That’s fine,” Emma said, waving that off. Regina wasn’t able to leave the house anyway. “Can you do it tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not,” Gold answered, though didn’t sound regrettable about that at all. Emma understood why though, even if she was a little surprised by the information, as he continued, “Tomorrow is my day with my son. I could come by Thursday afternoon?”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek. Thursday was the day Regina had scheduled their in-home therapy session with Archie, and she didn’t know if she wanted to add this on top of that, because who knew what kind of headspace they would be in after that was finished. “Friday’s better,” she told him, and Gold nodded his compliance.

“Friday it is then.”

“Good. If you come through, then you’ll get the slippers,” Emma responded, placing them back into her bag before pulling it over her shoulder. Gold inclined his head in acknowledgement, because if nothing else, he _did_ stick to the deals he made, and Emma found herself thankful for that little fact as she turned and headed out of the shop. It at least meant that Gold wouldn’t try to fuck them over and just steal the slippers back, which Emma supposed was a small comfort, given everything else.

Because the prospect of knowing, really _knowing_ that one of them was cursed, was making an uncontrollable sense of anxiety brew in the pit of Emma’s stomach. She wanted to believe that it wasn’t true, but what were the chances of that, really? And even when – no, even _if_ , she reminded herself – they knew for sure, then what? How would they go about finding out who was the one who cast it? If it really was Regina who was cursed, there must have been dozens of people who had reason to.

And if it was _her_ , well… then that actually made it even harder, because the only person Emma knew that had motive was Regina, and if she didn’t do it, then Emma didn’t even have a list to start with.

Emma forced herself to take a deep breath as she exited the shop however, reminding herself that it was better to focus on one thing at a time; and between now and Friday, she had a whole _mess_ of other things that she had to deal with that really needed her attention first.

**TBC…**


	25. Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, I’ve been depressed for weeks and haven’t written a single word as I’m just… not finding enjoyment in anything right now. This is also the last chapter I have finished, so I can’t guarantee when the next one will be posted. I’m sorry :/ Hopefully my brain will get over this crap sooner rather than later.

**CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE  
Glass**

“Are you wearing _jeans?_ ”

Regina looked up from multitasking, her demeanor utterly distracted as she took in the sound of Emma’s declaration of surprise. Barely even comprehending what the blonde was saying to her however, Regina held up her finger and spoke into the phone, “Another two weeks—yes, of _course_ I’m sure my card is on file, could you just…” 

An aggravated sigh left her lips at the desk clerk’s sputtering excuses about _verification_ , and Regina slammed down the knife she was holding, abandoning her task of trying to slice the tomatoes. Grabbing the phone that was being cradled between her shoulder and her ear, she snapped into it, “The details of your incompetence do not interest me; if you cannot manage to do your _job_ , then put me on with your manager— _yes, of course I’ll hold!_ ”

Emma’s eyes widened at Regina’s tone, and in noticing that she was in a bad mood and that was probably _not_ something she wanted to be around, tried to back out of the kitchen. But as Regina was waiting for the manager to be put on she spun back around and ordered, “Don’t go anywhere. I need you to shred the lettuce and make sure the meat doesn’t burn while I deal with these idiots; Henry will be back from Dr. Hopper’s soon and I want dinner to be ready in time. Now do you think you could actually manage that, or should I just continue to do everything?”

While the question was posed as though she were giving her options, Emma seemed to pick up on the fact that there really was only one right answer, and held her hands up in light surrender. “Shred the lettuce, don’t let the meat burn; got it.”

“Thank you.” While Regina was genuinely grateful that Emma didn’t feel the need to further her aggravation, her tone still sounded biting over having to deal with imbeciles that didn’t know how to do their job. How difficult was it, really, to just allow her to pay for another two weeks of her motel room over the phone? Quite a lot of her possessions were still there, and she needed to make sure that nothing would happen to them while she was in Storybrooke. 

Thankfully though, once the manager was put on the phone, everything was settled within a few minutes. After hanging up her cell, Regina exhaled a relieved breath, just glad that she had one less thing to be concerned with. 

And then her eyes landed on Emma.

“What on earth are you doing?!” Regina exclaimed, looking horrified as Emma used her hands to pick apart the head of lettuce, setting the torn greens in a bowl. Emma blinked at her, clearly not understanding what it was that she was doing wrong.

“Uh… shredding the lettuce?”

“With your…?” Regina began in disbelief, before grabbing the head of lettuce from Emma and using her hip to bump her out of the way with an exasperated sigh. “You use a _knife_ to shred the lettuce, Miss Swan, not your hands,” Regina told her, picking up the knife by the cutting board for a little show and tell before she began demonstrating on the part that was still salvageable. “Good Lord, did you even _wash_ them before you began? Honestly…”

“Sorry, _Mom,_ ” Emma retorted, rolling her eyes. “And yes, I washed my hands; I’m not an animal. Or a kid, for that matter.”

Regina just exhaled an exasperated breath and shook her head. “Please just keep an eye on the meat, and if you could get the cheese from the fridge that would be helpful. Thank you.”

“Fine.” 

The response was just as exasperated, but for once the tension between them wasn’t born from resentment or guilt. It was strange, the domestic sense of _normalcy_ behind this kind of interaction, and despite Regina’s irritation over Emma’s inability to just correctly chop vegetables, the whole thing was kind of… comforting, in a way. 

After Emma grabbed the bag of shredded cheese off the bottom shelf and tossed it on the counter, she tried to casually mention, despite how obnoxiously intriguing the frivolous topic seemed to her, “So, the jeans…”

Regina wrinkled her nose in an attempt to try and offset her embarrassment. She had been hoping that topic wasn’t going to be brought up again, but of course Emma wasn’t going to let it go. It wasn’t like her to be wearing anything other than dress pants and pencil skirts after all. But Regina kept her tone even as she moved on from the lettuce to finish her task with the tomatoes and asked, “What about them?”

“You’re _wearing_ them.”

“Well I assume that’s what they were designed for, dear.”

“Don’t give me that. I’ve known you for how long now?” Emma countered as she stirred the meat in the fryer, side-glancing her. “Not _once_ have I seen you wear jeans. I didn’t even think you owned a pair.”

“Yes, well,” Regina responded tersely, the amused smirk that now graced Emma’s face making her feel irrationally defensive over her wardrobe. “I brought most of my preferred outfits with me when I left town the first time; I don’t have much else here.” Her eyebrow rising in challenge, Regina asked, “Would you have preferred I walked around pants-less instead?”

Silence.

Regina smirked in amusement as she turned, being confronted by the most conflicted look on the blonde’s face. “Emma?” the brunette prodded, now curious to hear her response. She was toying with her, and perhaps given their rocky history she probably shouldn’t be, but Regina couldn’t help it. It made things feel… lighter. Better.

“I… don’t know how to answer that,” Emma managed finally, looking like the entire question was a trap and she had no idea how to proceed.

“It’s a simple yes or no question, dear.”

She was pushing, just trying to see if Emma would rise to the bait and play with her in the way that she used to. Perhaps it was foolish, because in the end, a game of teasing meant nothing when placed up against the problems they still had in their relationship, but as things seemed to have gotten a little better between them as of late, Regina wished to bask in that before it all inevitably came crashing down; which, in all honesty, would probably be on Thursday afternoon during their session.

It was something Regina both looked forward to and dreaded at the same time, as despite it surely being beneficial for the both of them, it would no doubt also bring up terrible topics that they had purposely strayed from. So yes, Regina would prefer to bask in the momentary reprieve from the drama in their relationship, should Emma let her.

And then the blonde smirked, allowing herself to succumb to the little game instead of obsessively trying to figure out if it was ‘smart’ or not. And perhaps, at the end of the day, that was better for them; to just live in the moment, instead of their depressing past and murky future.

“Not really,” Emma answered, turning around and leaning up against the counter to allow herself a better visual of the other woman, “because I _really_ like how your ass looks in those jeans.”

“Oh?” Regina inquired casually, trying not to allow herself to smile as she turned back to the tomatoes. “Then why was that such a difficult question for you?”

“Because,” Emma began purposely, and suddenly there were hands on Regina’s waist and her ass was being pressed against the blonde’s crotch and oh, damn; apparently if Emma was going to play, she wasn’t going to be bested as she finished with, “If you weren’t wearing them at all, then it’d give me easier access…”

The words were breathy against Regina’s ear, and the brunette tried to suppress the shudder they elicited. Emma still knew she had won though, as the victorious smirk Regina could see out of her peripheral clearly indicated, and she feigned disappointment with, “What, no comeback? Come on, Regina, you used to be good at this game.”

“Our son will be home soon.”

“So?”

“ _So,_ ” Regina stressed, turning around in the other woman’s arms so she could face her, one of her fingers curling in Emma’s belt loop to pull her closer as an eyebrow was raised, “I know you, dear; and should _I_ have won, the dinner would be burned and our poor child scarred. So you may have this victory… for now.”

It was just supposed to be light, playful, but her words brought a conflicted look on Emma’s face. “So if you won, that… was what you wanted?” she asked, as though she didn’t know what to think about that. And it wasn’t like they hadn’t had sex since they broke up, because _obviously,_ but sex for the sake of being with each other was different than sex for the sake of tearing each other apart.

“No, I…” Regina tried, suddenly feeling very awkward and foolish for even having started this in the first place. Gently pushing Emma backwards with the flat of her hand, Regina shook her head and turned back around to tend to the vegetables. “I was just… trying to have some fun with you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have; I’m sorry.”

“No, Regina, it’s…” Emma tried, placing her hand on the small of the brunette’s back imploringly. But then it seemed she lost her nerve, or had second thoughts, for it was withdrawn with a sigh as she stepped away. “Nevermind.”

Regina trapped her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment, her gaze focused on a task that really needed no more attention – as the vegetables were sliced by that time, and now all she was doing was making them far thinner than they needed to be – before awkwardly clearing her throat and requesting, “Please check on the meat. It should be done by now.”

“Right,” Emma said softly, the word coming out more like a sigh as she allowed the uncomfortable tension between them to linger. “Okay…” Running her fingers through her hair, Emma stepped over to the stove and began to tend to the task that Regina had delegated to her.

The two women fell silent then, the only sounds in the kitchen being the ones they made in preparation for dinner. As Emma took the meat off the burner and Regina began pouring the shredded cheese into a servable bowl, the blonde took that moment to speak.

“We should be honest with each other, right…?”

Regina turned towards her sharply, the hesitant tone of Emma’s voice sparking worry. She sounded like she feared getting into trouble. “What’s happened? What did you do?”

“Nothing!” Emma assured her quickly, before blinking and reassessing how much truth that statement actually held. “Well, _something_ ; but nothing, I swear—”

“ _Miss Swan._ ”

Emma couldn’t meet her gaze, and it caused paranoia to squeeze tight in Regina’s gut. Suddenly thoughts of Emma drinking again, or of her suddenly deciding maybe it was worth giving Neal a second chance, or perhaps that she had decided not to move with Henry at all began formulating in Regina’s mind, despite the fact that most of those were completely irrational. Still, Emma’s tone and demeanor left a lot to be desired, because she looked really _guilty,_ and that could only mean something bad.

“Relax, it’s not… I mean, I just—I figured, in the interest of honesty and openness and all that other crap, that maybe I should tell you that I went to a bar today, but—”

Anger.

Fear.

Disappointment.

Sadness.

All of those conflicting emotions suddenly hit Regina like a freight train, and as she demanded, “ _What?!_ ” they all poured outwards so abruptly that the overhead light shattered, causing both women to cry out in alarm as glass rained down on them. 

Emma ducked and covered her face with her hands as Regina backed up as far as she could go against the counter, but her feelings were still so uncontrollable that she pleaded, “Emma!” as she reached for her, needing the control the other woman allotted her magic before something else happened, because God, she could still feel its storm brewing inside of her, begging to be released again.

Emma grabbed immediately grabbed for her hand, and Regina hissed as some glass that had embedded in her skin got pushed deeper. “Shit,” Emma exclaimed, sounding so terribly apologetic and guilty as she moved to grasp the brunette’s wrist instead. “Are you alright? I’m sorry, I forgot—”

But the glass wasn’t important then, because now that Regina had the ability to control her magic, she furiously demanded without consequence, “What the hell do you mean, _you went to a bar?!_ ”

“Jesus, no, it’s not what you—Regina, I didn’t drink, I swear to God!”

“Then why the hell would you go there in the first place?” Regina demanded, still angry and frightened that perhaps Emma was lying to her. She didn’t look like she was, but the paranoia that was still firmly planted in the back of her mind wouldn’t let it go. It just didn’t make _sense._ Why on earth—?

“I was just—fuck,” Emma swore, realizing that as far as outcomes went, this was by far at the bottom of her list of preferred ones. “I was just… upset, and I don’t know—testing myself, I guess. But it’s fine, okay? I didn’t drink, I swear.”

“On Henry’s life.”

“…What?”

Regina could still feel the magic in her craving to be released, the effects of the defectively broken curse feeding off her emotions as her chest heaved in the struggle to not expel them of her own free will. “Look me in the eyes, Emma, and swear to me on our son’s _life_ that you did not drink at all today.”

“Regina…” Emma pleaded, her gaze connecting with the brunette's. Her eyes screamed of honesty, of upset and guilt for the reaction she had caused. “I swear on Henry’s life that I didn’t, okay? Please just… just calm down.”

Regina exhaled a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, relieved that Emma hadn’t foolishly undone everything she had worked towards. Still, she was angry at the woman for even putting herself in that situation, and she furiously hit Emma’s shoulder with her free hand. “You _idiot!_ ”

“Christ, _ow—!_ ”

“As if you don’t have enough problems, now you’re purposely _seeking them out?_ ” Regina seethed, furious that Emma would do something like that to herself. It was far too early in her sobriety to challenge herself in such a way, and Regina was certain all it did was bring her a painful struggle. “Do you just _enjoy_ being miserable, because I’m honestly beginning to—”

“No! It’s—” Emma tried, but her words just fell away into a frustrated sigh as she slumped against the counter, the grip she had on Regina’s wrist to control her causing the other woman to step into her space and trap her against it. Emma shook her head as she pursed her lips, before just shrugging helplessly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it…”

“No,” Regina objected, because she didn’t want Emma to think that she couldn’t be honest with her. Worrying her bottom lip for a moment, she exhaled a soft sigh. “I’m… I am glad you told me, I’m just having a hard time understanding why you would do something like that. You’re playing with fire, Emma…”

“I… I know, I just—” But she stopped herself, her gaze falling to the wrist she was holding, then setting her sights a little lower as she took in the damage her admission had caused. “Shit, Regina, you’re bleeding…”

Regina looked down at her hand, seeing red seep out from around the small piece of glass that was embedded in her skin. Her eyes then flickered to the rest of the kitchen, the shards being scattered along the floor and partly on the countertop, and upset tinged Regina’s tone as she noted, “The dinner’s ruined now,” because it was more than likely that some of it got into the food as well. She sighed heavily, and Emma’s brow creased in guilt.

“I’m sorry. I’ll—I don’t know, order us a pizza or something, okay? Just lemme… we need to take care of your hand.”

Regina nodded in agreement, and Emma led her into the bathroom before coaxing her to sit on the edge of the tub. After rummaging through the medicine cabinet for a moment, the blonde came back to sit opposite of her on the toilet seat. “Gimme your hand.”

Regina held it out to her, even though… “You don’t have to do this; I can tend to it myself.”

“You’re right handed and the glass is _in_ your right hand, Regina,” Emma told her, like she was being stupid. “You’d have a bitch of a time trying to work the tweezers with your left, so just… relax okay? I can do it. And besides,” she continued, before her voice dropped to a lower tone as the blonde all but mumbled in shame, “kinda my fault anyway, right? So…”

She trailed off, and Regina let her, because in the end, although Emma wasn’t entirely to blame for the light exploding, she was still the one who was foolish enough to walk into that bar in the first place and begin this whole ordeal. Bringing Regina’s hand closer to her body, Emma scrutinized the glass under the light first before attempting to dislodge it.

And then quicker and more accurate than Regina would have guessed she would be, Emma suddenly clamped the tweezers on it and pulled, the sensation of it leaving her body causing Regina to hiss in pain. “Sorry,” Emma apologized, grabbing the peroxide before coaxing Regina to get up and hold her hand over the sink. “Quicker is better though, otherwise it would have hurt worse.”

“No, that’s—it’s fine, I’m aware of that,” Regina told her, just finding herself surprised by Emma’s caretaking abilities. But it was as Emma poured the liquid over her cuts that Regina realized she probably had to have been, as growing up in the system with foster parents who hardly noticed her, let alone took care of her, left her with no other options but to care for herself. 

That thought caused a small frown to crease the edges of her lips as she watched Emma dab her skin with a gauze pad, and she softly questioned, “Emma?”

The blonde stilled her hand and looked up at her, the movement causing her face to become only mere inches from the Regina’s. She watched Emma suck in a small breath at the proximity, and Regina’s brow creased as she searched her eyes for a moment. “Please just… promise me that you won’t put yourself in that kind of position again. You have no idea how much it scares me.”

“Regina…”

“No,” she interrupted firmly, not about to let Emma try to downplay it or brush it off or whatever she was attempting to do. “ _No._ I had to watch you detox. I had to take care of you when you were feverish and vomiting and—and I will not do it again.” 

Regina could feel her heart squeezing painfully in her chest at just the memory of it, and her tone was regrettable but firm as she continued, “Emma, I… I _can’t_ do that again, do you understand me? That frightened me beyond anything else in my entire life, and should you choose to go down that path again, I will not follow behind you to pick up the pieces.”

Upset washed across Emma’s face at those words, but Regina wasn’t going to live her life solely to become the caretaker of a drunk. She deserved better than that. “So _please,_ ” she implored, sounding near-begging because God, Regina didn’t want things to turn out that way. “Do not put yourself in that position again. You may have been strong enough to do it this time, but the next time isn’t guaranteed; and I’m afraid that once you start again, even… even if it’s just _one_ , it will…”

“I won’t,” Emma promised her, fingertips ghosting across Regina’s palm before weaving their fingers together. “Regina, I _won’t;_ I promise.” 

Her voice sounded tight with emotion, like she was struggling to be okay with the fact that should she mess up, Regina wouldn’t be there for her. And perhaps in the end it only put more pressure on her, but the pressure to stay sober was the kind Regina _wanted_ Emma to have, especially because, in all honesty, as much as she would like to stick by her words, Regina doubted that if the time came she would truly be able to walk away; she loved her too much, and she desperately wished that would become her salvation, and not her undoing.

Regina looked at her, and the vulnerably that shown in Emma’s eyes tightened her heart within her chest. Grasping the back of her neck, Regina pulled the woman towards her, placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I love you,” she breathed against her skin. “And I really am so very proud of you.”

Because she was. What Emma was doing, finally _trying_ , finally wanting to recover from the addiction that had overtaken her life, was so very difficult. Regina wanted her to have positive reinforcement, in the hope that Emma would continue on this path; for if she didn’t, Regina was certain that it would be so much more difficult trying to stay sober the second time around.

Emma’s eyes fluttered closed at the light touch of the Queen’s lips against her skin, and the unfinished question of, “Moment?” tumbled from her mouth, the singular word still easy to understand by the woman against her.

_This, right now; this moment… should we stay in it?_

Regina felt her heart pound in her ribcage, for she knew what Emma would, do should she allow her to. And right then, she craved a closeness, needed it after the scare she had had, and so Regina nodded. “If you would like, dear.”

And then Emma was kissing her, just a soft brush of lips that held no urgency or desperation; just the gratitude for Regina’s support being breathed into her like a prayer that it would forever stay that way. Fingers grasping the brunette’s hips, an encouraging tongue gently requested entrance, and Regina allowed the invasion, the soft kiss suddenly becoming firm, much more needy as they were both reminded that moments… they never lasted.

And perhaps that was why, in the end, they fell into each other in such a way. Ever since the curse broke, nothing was guaranteed to them; cracking the door was like opening a floodgate, and although Regina tried to blame it on Emma and her impulsiveness, she knew she herself was just as much to blame.

Her back was pressed against the edge of the sink then, and Regina’s breath hitched in her throat as she held onto her tighter, parting her lips a little wider to kiss Emma with more passion than they truly had time for. But as the blonde’s breathing picked up and Regina’s fingers tangled in sun-kissed hair, the nails that raked against the skin beneath her shirt in a display of want were suddenly interrupted by the sound of their son’s voice.

“Moms…?”

Emma withdrew like she had been burned, her eyes a little darker than they were before when they connected with Regina’s. “Go,” the brunette softly encouraged, not wishing for their son to find them held up in the bathroom a little flushed and short of breath. “I’ll finish bandaging my hand.”

Emma hesitated for a moment, just _looking_ at her like she was unsure how to feel about anything anymore, until she finally nodded her compliance and left the bathroom. Trapping her bottom lip between her teeth, Regina turned back towards the sink to tend to her wound, finding herself wishing that things weren’t so complicated; because while they were better, surely, they really were far from simple in any sense of the word.

When Regina exited the bathroom she heard far too many voices than there should be in her kitchen, and one of them specifically set her teeth on edge as she grew nearer to the conversation. “—dangerous, Emma. If Regina can’t control her temper…”

“This wasn’t her fault, okay? It was mine,” Emma defended, sounding exasperated as the tinkling of glass followed her words. “I said something I knew would upset her and had forgotten about how magic was in this house. If I touch her though, she’s fine; she can control it. So just… leave it, alright? It’s not gonna happen again.”

Snow said something after that, but it was lost to Regina as her attention focused on something else.

“Henry?” Regina asked gently, seeing her son standing in the foyer with an annoyed look on his face as his birth mother and grandmother argued in the kitchen.

“All they do is fight about you,” he told her, folding his arms across his chest. Regina’s lips creased into a sympathetic frown as she crouched down in front of him, placing her hands on his arms.

“It’s only because neither of them can talk about what they need to,” she assured him, even though a part of her knew that wasn’t entirely true. Even if Snow and Emma worked out their issues, Regina would still be hated by her soul mate’s parents. Brushing the hair back from her son’s eyes, she asked him, “How was therapy?”

“Archie says I should talk to Emma about my Dad,” he revealed, shifting a little in position, as if the conversation worried him. It was understandable though, as Regina was sure while a part of Henry ached to know his father, the other part was wary because he had apparently done something bad to Emma.

“You should,” Regina agreed, giving him a small, encouraging smile as the sounds of an argument continued to float from her kitchen. It was beginning to grate on her nerves, but Regina took a deep breath and told her son, “And I… I actually think I should speak with your Grandmother for a moment, so why don’t you go in the living room and I’ll send Emma in with a few of the take out menus, and you can decide together what you’d like to order for dinner.”

“Kay,” Henry relented, the word coming out more like a murmur than anything else as he looked at the ground. 

“And darling?” Regina prodded, gently tilting his chin up with a knuckle so he could meet her gaze. “Perhaps you should try to speak with her, if you’re feeling up to it. I can give you both some space.”

Henry didn’t promise her that he would, but he did acknowledge that he had the option by nodding in response. Regina gave him a gentle smile before telling him, “Go on then,” before standing herself, heading towards the kitchen as her son went in the opposite direction.

“—isn’t a safe environment for a child. I know you think you can control her magic, honey, but—”

“I would very much appreciate it, Snow, if while in my home, you wouldn’t try to talk behind my back like some sort of immature, prepubescent child,” Regina informed her, coming into view of the two women who were still cleaning up the shattered glass. “We’re all adults here, after all; should you have something to say to me, then you should say it to _me._ ”

“Regina, it’s fine; don’t get into it—” Emma tried, but was ultimately unsuccessful as Regina merely held out her hand for the broom that she was holding.

“Henry’s waiting for you in the living room,” she told her. “Bring some of the take out menus and decided what you’d like for dinner; your mother and I will clean the rest of this up”

Emma sighed heavily, knowing this wasn’t going to be pleasant if Regina was _actively_ seeking out Snow to talk to, and the said woman raised a suspicious eyebrow at being allotted the privilege of staying. “Regina…” Emma tried, the word mixing with a heavy sigh.

“Go,” Regina gently encouraged, taking the broom from the blonde’s hands. “You need this time with him anyway; make the most of it.”

Emma pursed her lips in a tight line, looking apprehensive about leaving them alone, but at the same time wishing for the time to speak with Henry. Eventually though, she just exhaled a relenting breath and moved towards the door. Before she exited however, a hand was placed on the small of Regina’s back and Emma leaned in, whispering, “Please try to stay calm. If I’m not here…”

“I know, dear,” Regina assured her. “I’ll be fine.”

Emma looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to assess whether or not her words were truth, but in the end she just had to believe they were. And so after Emma reluctantly exited the kitchen, Regina’s gaze turned cold and landed on Snow, who looked as though she wasn’t sure what to expect, but was going to stand tall and deal with it anyway.

“I will tell you the _same_ thing I told Emma, Regina…” Snow started, looking ready to go on a tirade that Regina couldn’t care less about. And as such, that was about as far as the woman got before Regina took a firm step towards her, and interrupted her train of thought.

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” she began, voice dangerously level. “We are not here to speak about your foolish concerns over _my_ child’s safety. I am more than aware that you do not like me, Snow, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am a very capable mother; and between Emma and I, Henry is perfectly safe in this house.”

Snow’s surprise showed through her irritation, but she didn’t contradict that claim as she asked, “Then _why…?_ ”

“Emma.”

Snow blinked, confusion and worry washing across her features as the mother in her overrode the hatred she had for the woman in front of her, and she stepped towards Regina imploringly. “What’s happened? Oh god, has she been…?” But Snow couldn’t bring herself to say the word, her fear that her daughter was falling back on old habits making her wring her hands with anxiety.

“No, of course not; she knows better than that,” Regina answered, practically defensive on the woman’s behalf even though a part of her still feared that Emma really _didn’t._ Her idiotic display of ‘strength’ still worried Regina, but she had hoped she made herself clear about what would happen should she try again and fail. She didn’t want Emma attempting such a thing again; it was utterly foolish and completely counterproductive to trying to heal. 

Snow’s brow creased, unable to understand what else regarding her daughter could be so important that it warranted Regina to willingly speak with her. “Then what’s wrong? Is she… is she alright? At least tell me that.”

“Of course she’s not _alright,_ ” Regina practically snapped at her, blame and hatred showing beneath her darkened eyes. “Why on earth would I subject myself to speaking with someone like _you_ otherwise?” It infuriated her, Snow’s complete level of incompetence, but Regina took a moment to tear her gaze from the woman before her, knowing she had to keep her temper in check. Shaking her head in contempt, she began sweeping up the remainder of the glass as she spoke.

“Your daughter’s broken,” Regina told her after she had taken a breath, keeping her eyes on her task so she could try to disconnect from the feelings involved in it. “And I’m aware that you blame me for that, and I won’t deny that I’ve had my part in it. But Emma was broken long before I even met her. Her anger, her resentment, and most of all her _trust issues,_ stem from living her entire life feeling betrayed and abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her—”

“ _No,_ ” Snow interrupted, her tone furious and defensive as she realized what it was Regina was implying. “No. You, of _all_ people, Regina, don’t get to stand there and blame _me_ for my daughter’s abandonment—!”

“ _I’m_ not blaming you, Snow,” Regina snapped, tearing her eyes from the pile of glass to glare fiercely at the woman in front of her. “ _She_ is.”

Snow’s expression went from infuriated to wounded within seconds, before denial kicked in and she shook her head, unable to believe Regina’s words. “No, you’re lying. Emma knows we didn’t have a choice—”

“Yes, she knows that,” Regina freely admitted, because it was the truth. That didn’t, however, seem to make any difference at all to the woman who had once spent the nights of her childhood crying for her parents who weren’t there. “She knows I forced your hand; she knows that if it wasn’t for me, she most likely would have had something resembling a normal childhood, with a real home and parents who loved her. But that does _not_ change that fact that she grew up feeling unloved and unwanted; and it certainly doesn’t erase the hurt she feels for being condemned to a horrible life by her parents, just for the good of a kingdom she was never even a part of.”

Snow stared down at her, eyes large and vulnerable as she tried to hold in how upset those accusations made her. Suddenly she looked no more than the child she once was being scolded by her stepmother, yet instead of giving Regina a sense of superiority, all it did was cause her even more discomfort over how incredibly screwed up her ties to Emma really were.

It wasn’t as though she really had a choice in the matter though. Things just were how they were. 

“She… actually told you that?” Snow asked her, voice soft and disbelieving as her gaze screamed for Regina to tell her that it really wasn’t true.

Regina swallowed hard, remembering that night. Anger and sadness brewed in her gut, and she had to look away again and try to breathe so it wouldn’t overwhelm her. “I held her while she cried,” Regina told her, voice much softer than the blame she felt should’ve been expressed. “And I… _believe_ me, Snow, I tried to explain to her that it was my fault, because I know that it is. But all it did was cause her more pain, to hear me express an apology and regret for what I had done, as she has never once heard that from _you._ ”

Snow opened her mouth to speak, but Regina didn’t let her. She wasn’t finished. “And instead of fixing the relationship with your daughter, you’ve become so goddamn inflated with your own self-righteousness you’ve taken to ruining _mine_ instead, solely because you cannot fathom yourself to blame for a piece of Emma’s broken heart.” The words were filled with contempt as hatred burned inside her; and god, Regina couldn’t look at her, because she was sure if she did, something would explode. “And I don’t _care_ if it’s some backwards attempt at trying to fix the only thing you think you’re able to, because all it’s doing is causing our _son_ discomfort, and her to resent you even more.”

Snow swallowed the lump in her throat, her eyes beginning to water at Regina’s words. She had thought she was doing the right thing, but the truth of it was, she wasn’t. It was so very far from it, and she needed to hear this. She needed to _fix_ this, because Regina sure as hell couldn’t.

“Mine and Emma’s relationship is just that, _ours,_ ” Regina continued firmly, furiously sweeping the broken glass into the dustpan. “And you are by far my least favorite person on this earth, but you’re Emma’s mother, and one source of her pain; pain that I…” Her voice choked up, and Regina had to take a breath before revealing, “I _desperately_ wish for her to no longer experience. So if you’re so goddamn content on trying to ‘fix’ her life, Snow, do yourself a favor and focus on the only part of it that you actually have control over.” 

Burying all her feelings enough so that she could look up at her, Regina’s demanding gaze met one full of self-loathing and guilt as she finished, “So if you care, even a little, about how much pain Emma has inside of her, you need to grow up and start dealing with your own guilt. You need to tell your daughter that you love her, that you wanted her, and that you are _sorry;_ because if you don’t, I guarantee that that there will come a time when you’ll have lost her all over again.”

“And you wouldn’t want that?” Snow asked, the question filled with disbelief and misplaced anger. “Because I have a hard time believing it.”

Regina took a deep breath and counted backwards from ten as she rose from the floor, bringing the dust pan over to the garbage. When she finally felt like she could address Snow without accidentally setting the house on fire, she bluntly told her, “I _despise_ you.” The glass tinkled as it fell into the waste bin, and afterwards Regina turned towards the other woman. “And believe me, dear, should there be an option where Emma would be perfectly content without you in her life, I would gladly be pushing for it.”

Snow looked furious at that, but it honestly didn’t even matter, as Regina knew it was pointless to even wish for such a thing.

“But there isn’t,” Regina continued bitterly, loathed to admit it. Still, other things mattered more. “So yes, _Snow,_ I wouldn’t want such a thing. I would much rather Emma play happy family with you and your Charming idiot than spend the rest of her life believing that you both don’t care about how badly you’ve hurt her. Because in case it’s escaped your narrow-minded notice, I love Emma _far_ more than I could ever hate you.”

Snow pursed her lips into a tight line, anger and guilt and sadness brewing behind her eyes before trying to implore, “David and I _never_ meant to—”

“I don’t care,” Regina interrupted, not about to let the woman go on a meaningless tirade. “I’m not interested in hearing your excuses, Snow, because it’s not _me_ who should be hearing them. I kept you here to explain to you what needed to happen, and now you’ve heard it. That was _all_ this conversation was for.” 

Grabbing the trash bag out of the waste bin with the intentions of properly disposing of its contents, she shot Snow one last look before finishing cruelly, “Now, do be a dear, and go somewhere you’re actually _wanted_ , because it certainly isn’t here.”

**TBC…**


	26. Photographs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all your kind and supportive words during my hiatus; even though I’m an awkward weirdo and didn’t really reply to many PMs because I didn’t know what to say back, I’m really appreciative of them :) Anyway I know it’s been a month and a half since I updated (since once I got my muse back, I decided to do NaNo instead – whoops), so as an apology I made this chapter about twice the size of my normal ones. Like literally, its 12k words long, lol. It’s ridiculous. That being said, while I have about six weeks to solely dedicate to this fic before I have to go back and work on my other one as well, I just got a second job and will be working more often. I will still try to update weekly, but if not, I promise I’ll throw out my policy of only updating on Wednesdays and just update when they’re ready so you don’t have to wait as long. But yeah, just wanted to forewarn you all just in case.

**CHAPTER TWENTY SIX  
Photographs**

“What about this one?” Emma asked, holding up another purse to Regina’s gaze. They had been trying to figure out things they could sell so they could get another car without having to cut into their moving funds, and thus far all Emma had learned was that most of Regina’s possessions were ridiculously expensive and entirely unnecessary; one of these bags could probably feed a fucking orphanage for an entire month, for shit’s sake.

“Gucci.”

“That means nothing to me, Regina.”

Regina exhaled a soft sigh as she took the bag from Emma’s hand, putting it in the ‘to sell’ pile. “It’s expensive,” was all she confirmed, and Emma was trying, really, not to let this entire thing bother her, but the look on her face must have said otherwise because Regina asked sharply, “What? You’ve been looking at me like that ever since we started this little endeavor. If you’re unhappy with me, dear, then outright say so, otherwise I would appreciate it if you silently judged me where I wasn’t around to bear witness to it.”

“I just…” Emma sighed heavily, aggravation etching across her features. “I don’t understand how all this expensive shit can be so damn irrelevant to you. It’s so... I don’t know, fucking _privileged_.” The word was spat out like it was something dirty, because to Emma, it kind of was. “And okay, I get that you were a queen and were probably used to being spoiled rotten, but I mean, Jesus, when I mentioned them earlier you looked surprised, like you had forgotten they even _existed_ and I just…” 

Emma shook her head and turned back towards the closet, not really wanting to look at Regina right now. Maybe it was irrational jealousy over the way Regina lived, but still. The entire thing just angered her.

“I had _forgotten_ because I purchased them almost fifteen years ago and since then my tastes have changed,” Regina told her, her tone sounding defensive. “The day repeated here for twenty eight years, Emma. Do you understand what that means?”

“I don’t know, massive _boredom?_ ” Emma shot back from her crouched position in front of the woman’s closet, because wow, Regina’s defense was that she was so bored that she had nothing better to do than blow thousands of dollars on ridiculous fashion accessories? What a hard life that must have been.

Regina shot her a glare, and corrected, “It meant that once the day began again, nothing changed. Emma, my _bank account_ did not change; no matter how much I spent, the number went back up to the original amount the next day, at least until you came to town and time started moving forwards again. So _yes_ , many years ago I went on a couple frivolous shopping sprees when I realized how much it didn’t effect anything. But that is also how I was able to put money aside for Henry’s college fund – which I know you are unable to really contribute to – and it’s apparently the entire reason we’re going to be able to be a bit more financially stable after we’ve sold all these things, so really, dear, I don’t know why you look so upset with me.”

“Because it’s just…!” Emma started, holding out her hands in brewing frustration before she clenched her fists and dropped them to the ground. “It’s just so damn _easy_ for you, you know? And fuck, I get that this is just the part of me that remembers how I grew up with nothing, had to work for everything that I had, and I’m just… _jealous,_ or whatever, that you can buy two thousand dollar purses one day and completely forget about them the next because that kind of purchase didn’t even have to register with you.”

“And okay,” Emma continued, apparently on some kind of tirade now that she had started, “I also get that it isn’t like money made your life any better either, because you’ve been the goddamn definition of unhappiness, but on some level it just _pisses me off_ that you can just wave your hand and poof! _Rich._ ”

“You…” Regina began, her eyes flashing with fury and disbelief. “You honestly believe it was that _easy?_ Just a wave of my hand and—?!”

Emma exhaled an exasperated breath. “I don’t know, it’s not like I get how magic works or anything, but—”

“That’s right, you _don’t_ know,” Regina interrupted firmly, looking really upset for reason’s Emma couldn’t even begin to understand. “You have no idea of the magnitude of a curse like this, or what it took to cast it! What I had to _sacrifice_ to try to find some semblance of happiness in my life, so that every time I passed a goddamn _balcony_ I didn’t have to feel regretful that the last time I fell from one, it didn’t result in my untimely death like it should have!”

Something sharp pierced Emma’s heart at those words, and distress washed across her face at the realization that Regina wasn’t just unhappy back then, but that she was bordering on suicidal; perhaps that she even attempted once, if what she was talking about wasn’t just an accident that Regina just wished later had actually killed her. And God, that… that broke Emma’s heart, to hear her talk that way. She knew Regina wasn’t happy back then, but that… Emma really never bothered to think about the magnitude of just how unhappy she really _was_ , and maybe she should have.

“So don’t you _dare_ sit there and think all this came without consequence, because it _did,_ ” Regina told her, voice hitching in her throat as tears stung the back of her eyes. “I lost the only two things that mattered to me in this world to cast this curse, and in the end, all it did was cause me more unhappiness. So I’m _sorry,_ ” she spat. “If you’re upset that I gave myself a comfortable life to try to make things easier, but nothing I’ve bought will ever make up for what I have lost, and how _pointless_ this entire endeavor was in the first place.”

“Regina, I…” Emma began, looking regrettable as she picked herself up off the ground to cross over to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—I shouldn’t have assumed that the curse, that any of this, was easy for you. That was… it was really stupid and thoughtless, and I just let my jealousy get the best of me. I’m sorry.”

Regina just pursed her lips into a tight line and looked away from her, arms shielding her midsection as she tried to literally hold herself together, and Emma gently touched her arm. “And it wasn’t… pointless, you know?” she tried softly. “You got Henry out of it. And… me, although I guess that really doesn’t count for anything now. But still, it… I mean you _did_ end up being happier here, right?”

Regina was silent for a long moment before inhaling a deep breath, trying to bury all of the feelings inside of her, and stepped away from the blonde’s touch. “Your father will be here soon—”

“Regina…” 

Emma didn’t want her to just dismiss this, because now that they were talking about it, she felt like maybe it was time for her to know how exactly the curse was brought about; maybe it was time to understand just what Regina had to do to try to find her happiness, so maybe Emma could someday learn to forgive her for the repercussions of it. But it seemed Regina wasn’t ready to reveal that yet, and she held up her hand to stop Emma’s questions. 

“You knew I would have to finish this myself while you were at work anyway. And I doubt Henry’s ready for school, so why don’t you go attend to him and just…” Regina sighed heavily, moving past her to get to the closet as she requested softly, “Give me some space, Emma. Please.”

The blonde’s lip got trapped between her bottom teeth as she looked at Regina, feeling really guilty for ever being stupid enough to think she knew anything at all, but she sighed softly and relented with a quiet, “Fine,” because in the end, if Regina didn’t want to talk about it, then she didn’t have to.

Emma just hoped that one day that would change, because while the last time Regina opened up it proved to be nothing but painful for her, understanding each other’s pain might just be the only way they’d ever begin to heal. And that… they needed that.

 _God,_ did they need that.

[x]

“So Henry decided he wanted to meet him then?”

Emma exhaled a tired breath, her fingers clenched around a coffee cup that a strong part of her wished had more than just _coffee_ in it, and leaned back in her desk chair after she had hung up the phone. David stood in the threshold of the doorway, apparently having overhead the conversation with her ex.

“No, we… I don’t know,” Emma admitted with a soft sigh, still unsure how her conversation with Henry had really gone last night. She was sure that the kid was still mad at her about lying, but he seemed to at least understand _why_ now. After taking a sip of her coffee, she revealed, “We just talked. I was honest with him, about everything that happened, and Henry, he… he hasn’t really decided yet.”

Sighing softly, Emma continued, “I know a part of him wants to – Neal’s his Dad and everything – but I think he also feels upset on my behalf, so…” She shrugged, not really knowing how things were going to turn out yet. “I don’t know. I just needed to let Neal know that I talked to him, so he didn’t think I was fucking it off.”

David looked like he was about to respond, but yelling erupted in the next room over, the sounds floating over from the containment cell, causing Emma to rub her temples in aggravation. “Are they going to kill each other?” she asked flatly, as though she wouldn’t entirely be opposed to the idea.

“No, they do this every day,” David responded tiredly, just moving further into the office so he could shut the door and muffle the sounds of Scar and Jafar blaming each other in loud, angry voices for their capture for what was apparently the umpteenth time this week. “They haven’t put their hands on each other yet, probably because without magic in the equation they look to be about equally matched for strength, so I usually shut myself in here to drown them out and just keep an eye on them through the glass.”

Emma’s eyes landed on said glass, looking out at the two men gesturing angrily towards each other. There was still at least two feet of space between them though, so maybe David was right, and there wasn’t any cause to worry about it. And while she was glad David managed to capture them while she was gone, and that it took one load off of her current list of concerns, she still… 

“When is the jail going to be done again?” The question almost sounded like a whine, but goddamn, Emma _did_ not want to have to deal with this every day.

“The dwarves are working as fast as they can, but it’ll probably still be another month at least.”

Great.

Not that she was going to be here that long, but still. For the time being, she didn’t want her days spent at the office to be filled with the sound of blame and resentment; she got enough of that inside of her own head. 

“Emma,” David addressed, his voice dropping to a more serious tone that tore the blonde’s gaze from the glass window. “About Neal…” And Emma was expecting him to go off in disapproval the way Mary Margaret had about her not telling them sooner, or get pissed on her behalf for what he had done to her, but instead David just calmly asked her, “When do you think I could meet him?”

And oh, he _almost_ got away with making that sound casual, but Emma saw David’s fist clench by his thigh despite the calmness in his voice, and her eyebrow rose at what he was trying to play it off as.

“You mean, ‘when can I shoot him’?” Emma asked, keeping her voice just as level before she took another sip of her coffee. The man sighed, irritation etching across his face at being called out on his protective intentions, as he knew Emma wasn’t going to just let him be a father in that way.

“I haven’t shot Regina yet, have I?” David countered, which only caused Emma’s eyebrow to arch further. He exhaled a breath though, before explaining, “I just want to have a chat with him, that’s all; man to man.”

“Man to man?” Emma asked, sounding amused; he was obviously watching far too much television. She suppressed the urge to continue to poke fun at him for it though, because in a way, his protectiveness _was_ appreciated. Still, Emma wasn’t a little girl anymore, and she didn’t need him to do that. 

“Look, what you’re… I appreciate it, I do,” she told him, the words coming out a bit awkward despite them being the truth. “But all that happened over ten years ago, and yelling at Neal or threatening him or whatever you’re planning to do won’t change the past. It’s fine, really.”

David looked like he was expecting that, but unlike Mary Margaret, he never really pushed when it was obvious his daughter wasn’t going to budge. He followed in line behind his wife, yes, but it was never really he who dealt the first blow. “I just don’t like that he hurt you,” he told her honestly, and sounded almost at a loss about what to do about that, since Emma didn’t want him interfering. “Or that she did. That _anyone_ has…” 

But David trailed off, knowing Emma got his point, and put up his hands in surrender as he relented, “But I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. It’s your life.”

Emma looked at him in disbelief then, because… seriously?

“Where the hell was that kind of thinking when you banished _Regina?_ ” she asked, anger on the other woman’s behalf tingeing her words as her hand squeezed tightly around her cup of coffee. David briefly looked regretful for even starting this conversation, because look where it had led, but he straightened his back and answered her as honestly as he could.

“Regina was different, Emma. She cursed this entire town and needed to be punished for that. While I won’t deny that a part of it was for the good of you and Henry, it still would have come about regardless. And honestly, our ruling may have been even worse _without_ factors like you and Henry to consider.”

Beheadings and firing squads came to mind, but Emma pushed them away immediately. She didn’t want to think about those scenarios even if they were unlikely to happen anymore, as the image of them still made her stomach twist uncomfortably in her gut.

“But it also made you resent us,” David continued, his voice catching a little with the emotion that fact elicited from him. He cleared his throat then, pushing it down to finish, “And neither your mother nor I want that to happen again.”

Emma shot him a skeptical look. “Mary Margaret has done nothing _but_ shit on Regina, and now Neal, ever since we got back. So I don’t know what—”

“We’ve… talked,” David interrupted, “about some things recently. And… well, maybe it’ll be better if all three of us have a conversation. Would you be able to come to dinner tonight? We could discuss everything then.”

The prospect of _talking_ about everything didn’t exactly set Emma alight with joy, as conversations with her parents usually ended up being nothing but painful, but curiosity as to what they had been ‘talking’ about won out, and so she relented with, “Yeah, that’s… fine, I guess. You don’t want me to bring Henry?”

“I think it’d be better if it was just the three of us,” David answered, his expression strange and unreadable. He looked emotional over it, but _which_ emotion, Emma really wasn’t sure. It made her brow furrow, but she didn’t spend too much contemplating it, as she would know later tonight anyhow.

The screaming from outside, which had previously stopped, began again, and this time it was so loud that Emma could hear them even through the closed door. “For _fuck’s_ sake,” she snarled, standing up so abruptly while simultaneously slamming her palms on the desk that her coffee cup tumbled over, getting all over the paperwork she was working on. 

_Ten, nine, eight…_

She wanted a drink. Fuck, she wanted a drink _so_ badly, because fuck stress and fuck being aggravated. And David seemed to realize that she was on edge, so he put a hand on her shoulder and told her calmly, “Don’t even worry about it. I’ll handle them, okay? And the paperwork.”

Emma looked at him disbelievingly, because wasn’t this her job? Still, in all fairness, she _was_ supposed to be guarding Regina and the magical hotspot as part of her ‘job’, and to come here and check up on things she had to leave Mulan there instead. Which… Emma really wasn’t sure how that was going, but it was only going to be for today anyhow, unless something dire happened. 

_Knock on wood._

“Besides, ever since they got arrested, things around here are pretty slow,” David continued as he began mopping up the mess Emma made with a paper towel. “Why don’t you just go back to Regina’s and I’ll call you if something comes up.”

“You sure?” Emma asked, because she didn’t want to be flaking out on her responsibilities. She _was_ the Sherriff after all, and really, the entire thing with ‘guarding’ Regina was probably what deputies existed for, but… in the end, it was probably just better for everyone involved if she were the one to do it. Regina was and always would be her problem.

 _Problem._ The word sounded laughable in Emma’s head. Regina was something, yeah; but never really that. If anything, she was more of a problem to Regina.

David gave her a soft, encouraging smile however and responded, “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll see you at dinner; we should be having it around six.”

“Okay,” Emma relented, glad for the reprieve; because honestly, it seemed like dealing with Regina was far less stressful than dealing with two screaming criminals, at least as of late. 

She just hoped it would stay that way.

[x]

Unfortunately, Regina wasn’t exactly thrilled with Emma coming home early.

After brushing her off with a terse, “I’m still going through my things; should you decide to help, dear, you can start by sorting through what we don’t need downstairs,” the woman turned her back to her, completely ignoring Emma’s presence. The blonde sighed softly, realizing Regina was still angry with her for what she had stupidly said earlier, and mumbled an, “Okay,” before retreating down the steps and into the study.

Regina had asked for space, so she would give her some. Emma had just hoped that the couple of hours she had been at work were enough, but apparently not. 

And it was stupid, really, to feel so terrible when Regina shut her out like this. Emma had done it to her for months, so why shouldn’t she get the same treatment when Regina was angry with her? Fair or not though, being dismissed like that still stung, and Emma sat heavily in Regina’s desk chair with a sigh, just wishing she had never opened her mouth in the first place.

It wasn’t like Emma had intentionally upset her, it wasn’t as though she _knew_ how difficult it had been for her, but… in the end, she probably should have known better than to assume anything about Regina’s past anyhow. That was really stupid, but hey, it wasn’t like Emma was winning any awards with her intelligence as of late anyway.

Exhaling a long breath, Emma allowed her gaze to wander the expanse of Regina’s study. She had thought the woman was just going to sell her purses to cover the cost of a car, but apparently if she was going to start selling some of her things, Regina must have figured that it would be smarter if she just got rid of everything that wasn’t really needed. Which, to be fair, was a _a lot._ They could easily give Henry a comfortable life in a home that wasn’t a freaking mansion filled with expensive things, and while Emma didn’t know the specifics of what Regina’s bank account currently looked like, the woman must have decided that there was still cause for concern if she was willing to sell whatever she could scrounge together.

Still, Emma had no idea what Regina was and wasn’t willing to part with, and not having the woman in the room to confirm wasn’t really helping her indecision. In the end though, Emma supposed she could just throw some things together and have Regina look them over later, so the first thing the blonde did was try to find Regina’s letter opener. The thing had always looked ridiculously expensive, and really, who actually _needs_ a letter opener anyway? That was what hands were for.

It wasn’t on the desk like usual though, so Emma began opening the drawers to see if Regina had put it away for once. If not it had probably just been moved to her office at City Hall, which Emma could always swing by and get later if Regina decided it was something that could go. However, the blonde’s attention was momentarily diverted from her task as her gaze landed on a large manila envelope which had seemed to be thrown haphazardly in the bottom drawer. Now normally, this wouldn’t really attract Emma’s attention; desks were, for most people, a place for storage and they were rarely neat when they were being used all the time. Regina’s, however, was; everything was orderly and everything had a place and this… this seemed like something that was just thrown in there either without a care or with far too much to handle having it around.

So, of course, that spiked Emma’s curiosity against her better judgment; because yeah, the last thing she should really be doing was snooping around Regina’s belongings, but in a way she _did_ have permission, right? Regina wanted her to go through her stuff to find things to sell and hey, for all she knew, the envelope could contain autographed eight by tens of the entire freaking cast of Star Wars or something.

Yeah, okay, that was doubtful, but still; that justified it in the back of Emma’s mind at least as she slid it from the desk drawer.

Spilling the contents of it out on the surface in front of her, Emma’s breath immediately caught in her throat as she realized what it was that she found. The pictures… the ones Gold had been using to blackmail them, Regina _had_ them. And if Emma was remembering correctly, then that meant that Gold cashed in his favor with Regina and she had obliged him, but what on earth could he have asked for? Since the curse broke, Regina hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time in Storybrooke; she was banished within the first couple weeks, and both before and after that was under house arrest. It wasn’t like she had been in the position to do anything for anyone, right? Unless it was something magical, but even that… Regina had no control over it unless she was with Emma, so that left her with even fewer options to contemplate.

In the end though, the why of it barely mattered; because in that moment, all Emma could focus on was the fact that they were there, in front of her, bluntly reminding her of a time of ignorance-born happiness that she would surely never get to experience the freedom of again.

Trapping her bottom lip between her teeth, Emma began shuffling through the photos. This was the first time that she had seen them, as Gold had only dealt with Regina after they had stormed into his shop and God, they were… well, basically everything Emma never wanted someone like _Gold_ seeing. Regina and she were naked in nearly all of them, and a few were really goddamn explicit; like to the point where you could see exactly how many fingers Emma had buried inside of the brunette. And Jesus Christ, it took every ounce of willpower inside of her not to think about what Gold could have done with material like this. Not for blackmailing purposes, because that was already a given, but for… well, you know.

Yeah, that was the last fucking thing she wanted to think about, thanks, because just the possibility of it freaking _nauseated_ her.

Those photos though, they mattered very little once put up against the ones of them just lounging around on the dock. Regina was sitting on the edge with her feet dangled in the water, Emma’s head lying gently in her lap; their hands were clasped over the blonde’s heart, and they were looking up at each other with so much love and adoration that just the sight of it made Emma’s throat close up as tears began to well in her eyes.

They were the most terrible ones of all, because the embarrassment of being an accidental porn star didn’t hold a _candle_ to the ache those photographs brought to her heart. It felt like it was being crushed inside of her chest, and a singular tear slipped down Emma’s cheek as she found herself desperately wishing that things had been different; that Regina and she were still this happy, this in love. That weekend with Regina in her summer cabin had been the best time of her entire life, and it absolutely fucking killed her that she would probably never experience that kind of joy again.

She missed it. She missed _her;_ so much sometimes that it felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“Emma? I’m aware that I said I didn’t want you upstairs, but right now I really—” Regina began, yet stopped short once she took notice of the blonde seated in her desk chair with dampened cheeks. Her expression immediately became concerned. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Emma answered, the word sticking in her throat as she sniffled and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Shaking her head, she averted eye contact and told her, “I just—” But that was as far as she got, because Regina’s gaze landed on the photographs on the desk, and her face washed over with realization.

“…Oh.”

Yeah, _oh._

Emma released a long breath, her brow still crinkled in distress as she looked down at the photograph that had made her weep. “I didn’t… know that you got them back,” she responded softly, not really knowing what else to say besides that. It suddenly felt like there was a hole inside of her, this ache for a part of her life probably best left forgotten, as it wasn’t ever coming back.

There was a slight, awkward sounding hesitation before Regina shifted her weight between her feet and admitted, “Yes, I… fulfilled my end of the bargain.”

“Which was?” Emma asked, her voice sounding rather flat and lifeless as she continued to stare at the photo in front of her. She wanted to frame it. She wanted to burn it. She wanted to fucking cry again and never stop.

“Breaking the curse.”

That made Emma look up at her, and she took in the woman’s guilty demeanor. She had trapped her bottom lip between her teeth as she held onto her torso, looking at Emma like she was hoping the woman learning about yet another one of her lies wouldn’t cause a screaming match. But that wasn’t what was bothering Emma about that; yes, Regina lied, but that tied into her constantly lying about the curse’s existence anyhow. No, what bothered her was…

“You knew then.” Off of Regina’s perplexed look, Emma reiterated, her voice a little stronger as she looked the woman dead in the eyes, “You knew… you knew that we would break it; you _knew_ that telling me you loved me would destroy us, destroy everything you built here, and yet you did it anyway. _Why?_ ”

Regina looked away from her. “I didn’t have a choice—”

“There’s _always_ a choice.”

“Well I had hoped Gold was wrong,” Regina told her sharply, bringing her gaze back to Emma’s. Her voice hitched in her throat as she shook her head regrettably. “And I… I found that keeping my feelings from you; it was the more terrible option of the two. I was lying about so much, keeping so many things from you and I didn’t… I _couldn’t_ keep that from you as well. So I took the risk, and I… I lost everything.” Swallowing hard, Regina tried to keep her own tears at bay as she asked her, “Do you… still wish that I hadn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

It was the most honest answer Emma had, because there were parts of her that needed to know that Regina loved her; knew that should the woman have never said anything, it would eventually diminish their relationship anyhow. But then the other part was looking at these pictures and… and just wanting everything to go back to how it was before. It was so damn _easy_ before, wasn’t it…?

Although perhaps, in the end, anything at all was easier than this.

“Have you looked at them?” Emma asked her instead after a moment’s pause, her throat constricting with emotion again as she watched Regina shake her head, her eyes brimming with unshed tears as she quite literally held herself together in the doorway.

“No.” 

“That was probably smart,” Emma breathed, trying to find it within herself to give Regina an understanding smile, yet all it turned out to be was something so devastatingly sad. Her voice hitched as another tear fell delicately down her cheek, her gaze landing on the photographs once more. “They kinda break your heart, you know?”

Regina looked as though those words wounded her, and distress etched across her features as she took an imploring step forwards. “Emma…”

“That was the best weekend of my life,” Emma breathed distressingly, looking at the expressions of the two women in the picture. “It was… that was the first time that I knew I was so completely in love with you, and it was amazing and terrifying at the same time, but I thought that it’d be okay, you know? I thought that maybe for once, everything was going to turn out okay, and then…”

“Emma, please,” Regina implored, her voice choking up as she stood before her, looking as though she may just shatter on the spot. “Please stop…”

“I’m sorry,” Emma apologized, wiping the tears from her eyes as she set the photo back down on the desk. “I’m sorry we had to fuck it up, Regina; I’m so _fucking_ sorry…”

“Shh,” Regina hushed, sitting on her haunches to get on the blonde’s eye level. She cupped her cheek then, wiping away tears that were echoed on her own face now, and she tried to give her a reassuring smile that only ended up looking completely broken and lost. “There’s no use wishing that things were different anymore, because it’ll never change. All we’ve done for so long is regret everything that’s happened, and it’s given us nothing but more pain. We can’t keep living in the past, Emma; because we can’t touch it. But this…” Dusking her thumb across the contour of the blonde’s cheek, Regina told her softly, “This we can touch. This we can change.”

“How?” The question was so terribly small and vulnerable sounding, and Regina’s helpless look furthered at the weight of it.

“I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “But I’m sure one day we’ll figure it out. We have to.”

Emma pursed her lips and looked down, wishing that this feeling inside of her didn’t seem so suffocating, because the only time she felt like she could breathe was when she was in Regina’s arms. Wiping another fallen tear from her cheek, Emma rolled the chair back from her in order to stand. “I’m sorry,” she told her, feeling like such an idiot all of a sudden. “I know I promised you I’d be stronger, and yet I’m sitting here fucking _crying_ again like some sort of—”

“Emma,” Regina implored as she stood, grasping onto the woman’s forearm before she could make her getaway. “Being strong it’s… it doesn’t mean never feeling anything. You’re human, and expecting that would be irrational. So don’t ever berate yourself for feeling upset; you have a right to it. We both do. Because being reminded of… of something like that; of happiness when we no longer have any? It’s difficult.”

Emma took a shuddered inhale of breath and closed her eyes, trying to keep her tears at bay as Regina held onto her. She was still facing away from her, unable to turn in fear of the codependent part inside of her grasping for something that she didn’t know if she’d be allotted. Regina had been putting distance between them lately, trying to take things a little slower in order for them to heal. And Emma understood why she believed she needed to do that, but right then, all she wanted to do was turn around and bury her face in the other woman’s neck. She wanted to fall into her and block out the world, because as much as Regina broke it, she fixed it just as often.

“Emma,” Regina breathed, sounding a little vulnerable beneath the weight of the blonde’s silence. “I understand that you wish to run away and shut the world out in order to forget, but please… please don’t. I worry when you’re upset and on your own.”

Emma shook her head and sniffled as she opened her eyes. “I just… I don’t want to drag you into another one of my emotional pitfalls. You’re already pissed at me—”

“This is _about_ me, so I’m in this already,” Regina gently reminded her. “And… earlier, I suppose we could just put that away for now; I understand that you didn’t know, and therefore couldn’t imagine how much it would insult me, but… we have time to discuss it later. If you need me right now, Emma, then I’m here. You don’t have to be on your own anymore.”

No, she didn’t, and yet like an idiot she constantly chose to be. The fact of the matter was, she didn’t have Regina because she had chosen not to; Emma had actively _chosen_ to not be in a relationship with the former queen because of all the lies and the deceit, and the fact that she could no longer trust her. But that was crap, wasn’t it? At the end of the day, Emma still trusted Regina more than anyone else in her life. She might be the Savior, but Regina was _her_ savior, despite that fact that the woman also happened to be a murderer and a tyrant.

Emma had lived quite a lot of her life in a morally grey area, but it turned out that Regina’s grey was much darker than her level of comfort really allowed. Or, at least, that’s what she kept trying to tell herself. The longer she was with her though, the softer that voice in the back of her mind became; it still bothered her, Regina’s terrible past and the countless lies she had told, but as it turned out, it became rather hard to pretend that you were the one with the higher moral ground after tainting everything with your own spiraling darkness.

Regina was the light in their relationship now. Not her. In the end though, maybe it got them a little closer on the palette, and that made falling into the woman all the more easier.

Emma came to her from gentle coaxing, pressing her body against the length of Regina’s as she buried her face in the woman’s neck. “It’s stupid, you know?” she murmured against her skin, feeling Regina’s hand thread through her hair. “I chose this. I chose to walk away from you.”

“You didn’t choose to be hurt, Emma,” Regina reminded her gently, guilt and sadness tingeing her tone. “Should you have stayed with me, we still wouldn’t be as happy as we were when that photograph was taken. And I’m—” Her voice choked up for a moment, and Emma could only assume that she was now looking down at the picture on the desk. “I’m _sorry_ … for taking that away from you. I’m—”

“Stop,” Emma breathed against her neck, her fingers holding tight to the woman’s hips. She didn’t want to hear it; all they ever did now was apologize to each other, and it got them nowhere. Nothing changed. “Just stop, and maybe…” But the words ended, and Emma’s eyes fell closed as she allowed her lips to wrap around the base of the other woman’s neck. She didn’t really know what the hell she was doing, but it was just instinctual, to fight off their sadness in this way. It’s how they had been escaping their problems ever since the curse broke, anyhow.

“Emma…” Regina warned softly, but her breath had caught in her throat the moment the blonde’s lips touched her skin, and the hand that was weaved in her hair noticeably tightened.

“It’s not just because I love you,” Emma tried to reason, her fingers slipping beneath the hem of the other woman’s shirt. “I know you don’t want that. It’s an escape, you know? We’re… it’s just what we _do,_ and looking at that shit made me miss—”

“Something we don’t have,” Regina answered for her, trying to sound strong despite the tremor in her voice and the way she still couldn’t quite push Emma away from her. Lips were peppering the expanse of her neck as nails raked along the tautness of her abdominal muscles, and Regina had to take a shuddered inhale of breath before telling her firmly, “And it’s… it’s something that we can’t replicate either. Emma, I _won’t—_ ”

“I’ll hurt you,” Emma promised breathlessly, knowing she probably sounded ridiculously desperate at this point but not really caring. Looking at those photographs had left a hole inside of her that she needed to fill, and that’s what Regina wanted, wasn’t it? To be touched selfishly, not loved unconditionally. Which was… not at all what Emma wanted right then, but she was flexible. “If that’s what you want I can bend you over the fucking desk and beat your ass until it’s raw, but I just… I…”

“You see photographs of us happy and in love and that makes you want to hurt me?” Regina asked, her tone disbelieving and her breathing slightly heavy as she allowed the blonde to continue her assault on her neck. But Emma bit down then, causing a sharp gasp of pain to release from Regina’s lips, and the woman’s grip on her tightened as she wordlessly encouraged Emma to continue. 

They had always been easy in that way though, the both of them; touching one another had become a drug for them very early on, and despite countless times of trying to quit, neither of them had ever managed to succeed. Everything was such a chaotic mess that, sometimes, just being connected to each other in that way was the only thing that made sense anymore.

“No,” Emma admitted, as there wasn’t a point in lying about it. It wasn’t what she wanted at all. But she shoved Regina against the wall in one smooth motion, making the woman’s back collide heavily with the regal wallpaper before pinning her hands above her head, nails piercing the skin of her wrists as Emma fell into the role Regina wanted of her. Brushing her lips against the brunette’s teasingly, Emma breathed out her honesty, “I want to kiss every inch of your skin, I want to fall into you and make everything feel like it was, even if it’s a lie. I want to make love to you, Regina, but I… I know that’s not what you want.”

A flicker of intense emotion passed across Regina’s face at those words, yet Emma knew that she couldn’t let her dwell on it, as it would cause all this to end prematurely. Honestly though, just the thought of Regina not wanting Emma to make love to her made the blonde’s chest ache, but she had to push it aside, as Regina had every right to not want something so intimate with her. It wasn’t like they were those people in the photographs anymore, and maybe Regina was right to fear the pain it could ultimately cause.

So yes, Emma indulged her need for violent sex, because in the end it was better than nothing at all.

“So I’ll treat you like a possession,” she continued softly, the words being breathed across Regina’s lips as she allowed a hand to wrap around the woman’s throat. “I’ll take you so hard that you can do nothing else but scream and beg for me to hurt you just a little bit more, because that’s all we do lately, you know? Hurt each other. That’s probably all you think I’m good for now anyway, so I might as well live up to the pretense.”

It was stupid, to say that out loud, and Emma knew that. But while she once reveled in the abuse they dealt to one another’s bodies, now it just felt needless; they had so much pain already in their relationship, so why did they continue to bring it to the bedroom? They punished each other and themselves in so many other ways, and now that Emma was sober and trying to heal, she realized she didn’t want to be this way with Regina anymore. It hurt more than it helped, and it kept them trapped in a place that neither of them needed to be.

Regina’s face practically crumpled at her words though, and her tone was distressed as she tried to implore a gentle, “Emma…”

But Emma didn’t want to hear it. It didn’t matter anyway; if it was either this or nothing, then she would take this. That’s just the way it was, because she needed Regina. For better or worse, she needed her.

Her hand tightening on the brunette’s throat, Emma cut off her oxygen as she asked sharply, “ _Did I say you could speak to me?_ ” Because it was just easier, in the end, to just let it all go and be what Regina wanted her to be, even if it’s not what she wanted for herself.

The woman’s eyes searched hers for a moment, as though she were debating whether or not it was worth getting into now. But they had their session with Archie tomorrow, and eventually it seemed that should Regina raise issue with it, she would more than likely do so then, so finally she just allowed what was transpiring between them to continue, and shook her head in response. 

Emma released her throat then, and as Regina struggled to get air back into her lungs she told her, “You know better than to do something without my permission. Clear your desk and bend over it; you’re going to be punished before I even _think_ about rewarding you, do you understand me? _Go._ ”

Regina did as she was asked, with only a slight hesitation as she briefly second guessed her decision. This was a mess and they both knew it, but it was a mess they so often fell into. Emma had wanted it to be more, more than just _this,_ more than just pain and punishment and a power that neither of them ever truly held, but even in knowing that it stood to deteriorate them a little more, there was still something so _dangerously_ appealing about the way Regina so easily submitted to her.

It felt like winning.

Winning _what_ exactly, Emma wasn’t really sure. Maybe it didn’t matter. But they used to fight for the upper hand, and Regina’s pride used to never allow for such blatant submission even when she lost. _Now_ though, the woman slipped into the role designated to her with such ease that it gave Emma a sense of satisfaction, to know that she had trained her well. 

Which was actually probably laughable to think about, as all of this was really Regina’s doing. Emma remembered the conversation they had the first time they fucked after the curse broke of, “I still top you,” and “That’s because I let you,” and Regina had been right; she did hold the power in all this. Emma liked to think she did, as she needed the illusion of it, but the truth of the matter was, that the minute Regina ever said stop, then Emma wouldn’t hesitate to comply. 

And that, in the end, is where the real power lied; Regina controlled what they could do and how much they could do it, and Emma was merely an instrument to enact it.

Still, seeing Regina all bent over her desk with her ass in the air, completely silent and compliant, did make Emma want to give herself a pat on the back even if she didn’t actually deserve it. But then again, maybe that too was just part of the illusion.

Regina’s breathing hitched as nails began to scrape agonizingly up tanned thighs, pushing the woman’s pencil skirt up around her hips and exposing her lacy underwear to the heavy air in the room. Biting down on her lower lip, Emma’s pupils dilated with lust as she then brought the fabric down around the brunette’s ankles. “Count for me,” she ordered as light fingertips trailed over the curvature of Regina’s behind. The woman pressed against the desk readily nodded her compliance, and a loud _smack_ echoed through the room.

Regina whimpered. “One…”

It was followed by another, this time hard enough that it stung Emma’s hand. Regina jerked beneath her, nails scraping against the surface of the desk as she breathed, “Two...”

“How many do you think you deserve, Regina?” Emma asked her softly, allowing her hand to caress the area for a moment before delivering another firm smack on her rear end. A small sound of pleasure escaped the back of the brunette’s throat before she said the next number, and Emma raised an eyebrow as she waited for a response. “Ten? Twenty?”

“However many you wish to give me, Madame Swan.”

“Good answer,” Emma praised, allowing her fingers to slide down the center of the woman’s thighs. Regina exhaled a shuddered breath and spread her legs wider as Emma gathered moisture on her fingertips. Still, it wasn’t nearly enough yet. “Same safe word.”

“I don’t need it,” Regina breathed, before another hard smack was dealt to her ass, causing her to groan loudly in approval. “Four…”

“Well you deserve to have one anyway.”

And this time, one that Emma wouldn’t abuse. She still felt terrible for what she had done to Regina back in New York, and while the blonde wasn’t planning to be nearly as violent, she needed the woman beneath her to feel safe about this. Regina had her own issues to deal with though, and her foolish need to ‘sacrifice’ herself in order to appease Emma, in order to make up for what she had done in a past the blonde wasn’t even a part of, was one of them. And it worried Emma, that even should she need to, Regina would never utter the word, which was why she didn’t want to take this too far. 

Well, that and this was so far from how Emma wanted to touch her right now that it wasn’t even funny. But whatever; if Regina needed this, then that’s what she’d do.

Eleven more numbers followed, each preceded by a smack that caused Regina’s skin to become reddened and angry. Emma’s palm tingled with the aftermath of it, and the brunette was pressed against the desk breathing heavily as wetness seeped down her thighs, painting a glorious picture before crystal blue eyes. Regina was squirming as Emma touched her, running her palm over the expanse of her rear in order to sooth some of the pain. The woman’s ass felt like it was on fire, and a predatory growl slipped past Emma’s lips as she spread Regina with her fingers.

“Fuck, I wish I had a strap on right now,” Emma breathed, finding that this picture would be more complete should she be able to slam into Regina with something more solid from this angle. The brunette shifted then, and with a slight wave of her hand suddenly one materialized in a puff of purple smoke next to her on the desk. Emma’s eyebrows rose.

“I wish I had a million dollars.”

Regina snorted in response.

“…Just checking.”

“It was upstairs,” Regina told her breathlessly as Emma rushed to get the hell out of her jeans and put on her new little gift. “I can’t just ‘poof’ things into existence from nothing. I’m not a genie, dear.”

Emma had the strap on halfway around her hips before she stopped and said, “Wait, genies actually _exist?_ ” Regina gave her an exasperated look as she turned her head towards her, and Emma immediately finished with, “Right, not the time to discuss that.”

As she fiddled with the last clasp though, Regina moved from her bent over position to turn and face her. “Here,” she coaxed, pulling Emma up against her by one of the straps. “Let me do something…” As Emma raised a questioning eyebrow, Regina took the blonde’s hand in hers while her other passed over the shaft between her thighs, magic shimmering from her fingertips.

And, oh. Holy. _Christ._

Regina grinned wickedly as she continued to stroke the phallus, watching the other woman’s face contort in surprise and pleasure. Now, Emma wasn’t sure what it felt like to have a cock, but this had to be pretty damn close to it because Jesus, she could feel _everything;_ the firmness of Regina’s stroke, the warmth of her hand. It all shot to her center in such a way that it caused Emma to gasp hard and grip the other woman’s thigh, her eyes falling closed as she breathed out, “Holy fucking _shit,_ Regina…”

Regina chuckled low in her throat, continuing to jerk off the silicone member as she scraped her teeth along the expanse of Emma’s neck. “Mmm… you approve then?” she breathed against her skin, and Emma swallowed hard though her labored breathing as she nodded. “Do you want me to put it in my mouth…?”

Oh, holy hell.

“Yes, fuck… _please,_ ” Emma begged her, throwing the dominant role out the window because really, she just didn’t freaking care anymore. She’d rather be fucking _Regina_ right now, and not some slave. She’d take her roughly, fine, whatever, but she just wanted _her._ Regina was the only thing that ever fucking mattered anyway.

…So why the hell weren’t they back together yet?

It was a brief thought though, a terrifyingly complicated question that was completely pushed to the back of her mind as Regina dropped to her knees before her. Emma didn’t want to deal with it then, even though she knew it would start to become something that grew so large inside of her that she’d eventually be forced to face it. But in that moment, Emma had decided that nothing else existed except the dangerously erotic way Regina looked up at her through her lashes, fingers sliding tightly up porcelain thighs as she grew closer to the prize situated between her legs.

And then Regina’s mouth wrapped around the shaft and oh, holy _God._ Emma groaned low in her throat as she tangled her fingers through Regina’s hair, her eyes falling closed as she experienced something that was so out of this world. It was like getting eaten out, but at the same time so _not._ She could feel the heat of Regina’s mouth, the way her tongue swirled around the tip of the cock, and in a way it was as though her clitoris had grown exponentially and everything, _everything_ was centered on it. It was incredible.

Regina’s hand twisted the base of the phallus, her mouth sliding up and down the length of it agonizingly slow. Emma’s breathing began to labor as sparks shot through every inch of her skin, and she panted out an appreciative, “God, Regina… _yes…_ ” as the woman below her satisfied her in a way she never thought possible.

Maybe magic wasn’t the bane of her existence after all.

Regina moaned around the obstruction in her mouth, and Emma opened her eyes to look down at her. Her breasts heaving, her gaze caught Regina’s, whose eyes were near black with lust as she continued to pleasure her. And then suddenly there was a hand on the inside of her thigh, sliding upwards until she was being entered by two fingers, and Emma cried out in pleasure as her grip tightened on Regina’s hair. There was no more slow; the brunette fucked her mercilessly whilst still continuing to tease her tongue along the shaft, and once the entire length was taken in her mouth and fingers curled inside of Emma, the woman was falling so hard and so fast that her knees buckled from underneath her.

Regina caught her before she hit the ground, holding Emma as she came down from her high. Her head was spinning and her chest was heaving and _goddamn,_ they should really incorporate magic into their sex life more often, because wow. 

“Are you…?” _Alright_ , probably, was the question Regina was going to ask her, but she didn’t get the chance. Emma grasped the back of her neck and seared their lips together in a heated kiss, causing a clash of teeth and tongues that elicited echoing groans as she pressed Regina’s back firmly against the carpet. She rolled her hips into her as she pinned the brunette’s arms above her head, forcing the phallus to press into Regina’s sticky heat that, Jesus, Emma couldn’t _wait_ to slide into. She needed to feel her like this. She needed to—

“Wait, wait,” Regina panted, hitting Emma’s shoulder with her palm as she turned her head, panting heavily. Emma looked down at her, confused and still immensely turned on, and Regina reminded her breathlessly, “Carpet… burn…”

Oh, right. Yeah, that would’ve sucked.

Emma got off of her then, right before holding out her hand to help Regina up from the floor. The woman barely had a chance to get her bearings however before Emma had picked her up in one smooth motion, eliciting a cry of surprise before Regina was dumped rather unceremoniously onto her desk. She took it in stride though, grasping onto Emma’s tank top to pull her between her spread legs. Regina’s thighs were drenched in her own arousal, and as their lips collided together once more, Emma wasted no time sliding the phallus over the woman’s clit.

“Please,” Regina begged through heated kisses, her hands tangling in Emma’s hair as she wrapped her legs around her hips. But just as the blonde positioned the cock at her entrance, was when a thought hit her so suddenly that she had to pull away from her.

“Hold on,” Emma panted, looking a little panicked at the possibility formulating in the back of her mind. “Do I… should we use a condom or something?”

Regina stared at her disbelievingly for a long moment, before suddenly she erupted into laughter so fierce that she practically snorted, her hand covering her mouth to stifle it. Emma felt her face heat all the way up the tips of her ears and she glared at her while lightly shoving Regina’s shoulder. “Hey, shut up, it’s not like I know how magic works, alright? It _feels_ real and we have True Love and…. _whatever_ , you know—oh my god, stop _laughing!_ ”

“I’m sorry,” Regina finally managed, trying to suppress what could only be classified as a giggle fit at this point, which was… both endearing and really fucking annoying, honestly. She shook her head though and repeated, “I’m sorry. I know you… don’t understand these things. But I assure you, dear, it’s not possible to get me pregnant this way.”

“You’re _positive?_ ” Emma asked, still wary. Magic could do a lot of things, after all; or so she had witnessed. “Cause we’re each other’s True Loves, Regina; there might be an exception to the rule…”

“Emma,” Regina tried to assure her, grasping onto the front of the woman’s tank top to pull her closer. “Believe me, creating life via magic is a very complicated process, and involves the taking of another’s life to bring about a new one. There needs to be a balance, love, so unless you’ve killed someone today…” Emma wrinkled her nose at that, and Regina finished pointedly with, “That’s what I thought. So believe me, dear, having unprotected sex with an enchanted silicone dildo is perfectly safe.”

Emma rolled her eyes. Well when she said it like that it sounded so _stupid._

Still, there was something disappointing about that. Not that Emma wanted to magically knock Regina up because Jesus fucking Christ, a baby in the mix was probably the last thing they needed right now, but if… if things ever got _better,_ you know… there really was no other option? Emma didn’t want to have to kill someone to have a child with Regina, if that’s what they found they wanted one day. That’s just… that was bullshit, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t True Love count for something; how was that fair?

“You look disappointed,” Regina noted softly, her eyebrows furrowing as she gently touched Emma’s face, coaxing the woman to look at her. “Surely you don’t _want—?_ ”

“No, obviously,” Emma answered, like Regina was stupid to even ask. But that sounded too harsh and Emma exhaled a long breath while shaking her head. “I don’t know, I was just thinking… future-wise, you know? If we ever… if things actually worked out? Just sucks to know the option isn’t really there, that’s all. Or at least not one I’d be okay with taking.”

A wave of emotion passed across Regina’s face at her words, suddenly feeling the intensity of this unexpected conversation. After a moment she tucked a strand of hair behind Emma’s ear, finally responding regrettably with, “Magic isn’t… miracle working, Emma. It’s elemental, and there are laws that need to be abided to even achieve result. Creating life is… it’s a big thing, and not something that should come easy, nor without a high cost.”

“No, I know, I… I get it,” Emma told her, wishing this wasn’t emotionally affecting her as much as it was. It wasn’t like they were in a place to be having children together, after all. “I just thought… you know, True Love and everything? I guess it just doesn’t seem fair, that’s all.”

“And should magic not have been involved in our relationship, would you ever have expected such a result?” Regina asked gently, causing Emma’s gaze to hit the floor because no, obviously she would have never thought that. “It’s the same thing,” Regina continued, gently stroking the side of the blonde’s face. “Magic or not, we’re still both women, and some things… they just can’t happen for us, even should we want them to; at least not unless we’re willing to pay the price for it, which I don’t think is a very good way to bring a child into this world.”

Emma nodded, still unable to look at her because she felt like an idiot for even bringing this up. This was so not the time to have this kind of conversation, as neither of them knew if it’d even be relevant later in their lives. Still, Regina’s palm pressed against her cheek and coaxed Emma’s gaze to meet her own. There was so much emotion in the woman’s gaze that it made the blonde’s breath catch in her throat.

“But… thank you,” Regina breathed, the words barely even audible. “For even considering the thought of having children with me one day…”

Emma’s lashes hit her cheeks; this tightness enveloping her chest that she didn’t really know how to name. She turned her face to kiss the inside of Regina’s palm, before taking the woman’s hand in hers and pulling her the rest of the way towards her. Emma kissed her softly then, not really knowing what else to say or do. This wasn’t the way this evening was supposed to go, but she liked this emotion far more than what was previously in the air when they were together. It seemed more honest.

She knew in the end though, that it would likely scare Regina.

So when their kisses became a little more heated, when their touches became a little more wanton and desperate for more, Emma wasn’t surprised when Regina grasped onto the back of her neck, her hips craning for contact as she begged against her lips, “Do it hard. E-Emma, I _need—_ ”

“I know,” Emma breathed, trying to ignore the burning disappointment in the pit of her stomach as she touched Regina in a way that wasn’t at all what they’d become to one another. Taking the woman’s button down blouse in her hands, Emma violently ripped it open, popping buttons as she forced Regina’s back to hit the surface of the desk. The brunette exhaled a shuddered gasp before Emma wrapped her hands around the woman’s thighs, pulling her ass to edge of the desk. 

And yeah, it was erotic as hell. Fucking Regina in this way wasn’t terrible, but it just… it felt like something was _missing._ Weren’t they supposed to be getting better, moving forward; so why the hell did Emma feel like they were standing still?

But those thoughts left her mind the second Regina’s hand slid through her own heat, parting her folds and running the length of her middle finger over her clit as she moaned softly, waiting for Emma to enter her. And Jesus, if nothing else, Regina knew how exactly to distract her; that was for sure. 

“Fuck yourself for me,” Emma demanded without thought, as goddamn, right then that was _really_ what she needed to see. Regina grinned wickedly behind a bite to her bottom lip, and then she began to make the absolute sexiest showing of sliding her fingers over herself as she arched her back and moaned out her pleasure.

It literally took everything inside of Emma not to touch herself as well, but she just wanted to watch; she wanted to be driven crazy, because… why the _hell_ hadn’t they ever done this before? Regina had always been a cross between the devil and a sex goddess, so much that should she have needed to fall back on another career, she’d probably do amazingly well as a porn star. She was licking her fingers and then sliding them inside of herself, one hand pulling on her nipple as she tossed her flushed face to the side, panting out Emma’s name as she brought herself closer to orgasm.

It was the single sexiest thing Emma had ever witnessed in her entire _life,_ and by this point she could literally feel her own arousal dripping down her thighs.

“Emma… fuck, _please…_ ” Regina panted, bending her knees to spread herself a little wider as she slid her fingers out of herself, inviting the blonde in in her stead. Her fingers were still circling her clit however, causing Emma’s breathing to shallow as she begged shamelessly, “I want to come from _you…_ Please, Emma, I—!”

But that was as far as she got.

Emma didn’t need to be told twice, and slid the phallus inside of Regina so fast that the woman nearly choked on her own breath as she grasped for the base of the desk, crying out from the feeling of being so roughly invaded. She was ready enough, so Emma was certain she hadn’t hurt her, but even if she had it probably would have been hard to notice because oh, Holy Christ, the feeling of being inside Regina was _incredible._ Emma could feel her inner muscles clenching around the cock, pulling it in deeper and giving the blonde a sense of pleasure that she could have never even imagined. It wasn’t necessarily better, but it was _different,_ and after having sex in only certain ways your whole life, it was kind of freaking amazing to be able to feel something so entirely foreign.

Regina impatiently fisted her hand in Emma’s shirt as she roughly slammed her hips into the shaft, taking it all the way up to the hilt as she exhaled a strangled moan. Breathing heavily, Emma lifted one of the woman’s legs up over her shoulder and bent over her body, allowing Regina’s back to touch back down to the surface of the table, aware now that she wasn’t going to be required to do the work in this situation. 

But even as Emma used her other hand to grip onto Regina’s hip in order to meet her thrust for thrust, it wasn’t enough for the woman beneath her. “Harder!” she demanded breathlessly, her nails scratching through her hair as she arched her back. “Fuck me; fuck me like you mean it, Emma, _or don’t fuck me at all!_ ” And God, Regina almost sounded _angry_ in her desperation, like she was trying to forgot about everything that had passed between them earlier; a line of intimacy that she didn’t want to get close to, yet was coaxed towards all the same, because for them… for them it was _natural,_ wasn’t it?

And so in turn, it kind of made _Emma_ angry that Regina had spent all this time trying to get her to forgive her, to get her to be with her again – or at least so she thought – and now it was like the moment she grew close enough, the woman had decided to build up some kind of goddamn _wall._ So yeah, Emma fucked her harder. Emma wrapped her fingers around Regina’s throat and fucked her like she would like nothing more than to destroy that god forsaken wall with a damn _wrecking ball,_ and Regina ate it up like it was the best she ever had.

And in the end, that only managed to piss Emma off further.

The more her own orgasm built, the more the rage in the pit of her stomach expanded. Regina was practically screaming, her voice becoming hoarse from the force of it, and she was digging her nails into Emma’s wrist, telling her that she was getting close; trying to force her to increase the pressure on her throat so that she could have her orgasm whilst oxygen deprived. But no, fuck that. Emma knew how much Regina got off on that, and so instead moved her hand from her throat and pinned the woman’s arms above her head, thrusting so violently within her that she was sure to leave bruises on Regina’s pelvic bone as she was finally forced over the edge.

The feeling of the brunette’s inner muscles contracting so violently around the phallus led Emma to her own orgasm in rapid succession, and as she came she practically crumpled on top of her as she trembled and gasped for air. But it didn’t last long, as Emma didn’t want to be there anymore. Her anger was starting to suffocate her, so much that it was starting to actually _upset_ her, and furious tears stung the back of the blonde’s eyes as she unstrapped the cock and threw it to the ground.

She didn’t even look back at Regina as she turned to head out of the room.

“Emma, what…?” Regina tried to ask, her breathing uneven as she struggled to hoist herself to a seated position on the desk. She sounded so terribly put out. “Where are you going?”

“I have dinner with my parents in an hour, and I need to shower,” Emma said flatly as she gathered up her jeans from off the carpet. Thankfully her voice broke only slightly during her sentence, as she was expecting each and every word to crack from how she felt inside. This was supposed to fix it, and yet instead all it did was make her feel like she was falling apart even more.

“So you’re just…” Regina began disbelievingly, sounding as though she didn’t know whether to be angry or upset, “you’re just going to fuck me and _leave?_ Jesus Christ, Emma, you can’t even be bothered to _look_ at me, do you honestly think this is an okay way to treat me?!”

“Oh, don’t fucking act like it’s not what you want!” Emma snapped furiously, finally rounding on the other woman. Her eyes stung with fresh tears but her expression was plastered with anger and blame as she looked at the woman on the desk. “If I had had it my way I would have touched you like you were worth something, but that wasn’t what you wanted, was it?!”

Regina tensed her jaw, but said nothing. But it didn’t matter, because Emma wasn’t done.

“This… all of this unhealthy _bullshit_ that we keep immersing ourselves in is doing nothing else but fucking us up more!” Emma shouted, furiously gesturing between them. “We’ve hurt each other enough, Regina, so why the hell do we have to keep doing it when we fuck; why can’t we just try to be _normal,_ for once in our fucking lives?! Why… God, why the hell are you trying to keep us _miserable?!_ ”

Regina continued to stay silent, looking like she was fighting the urge to either not cry, or not lash out and beat Emma within an inch of her life. Which, in the end, Emma should have known better not to invoke in her, especially not when she wasn’t touching her while in this house.

Because suddenly a vase in the corner of the room shattered into a thousand pieces.

Emma nearly jumped out of her skin, but before she could come to Regina and force her to control her magic, the other woman pointed towards the door and demanded, “ _Get out._ ”

“Regina, you’re gonna fucking bring down the house if you don’t—”

“I said _get out!_ ” Regina screamed furiously, causing the ground beneath them to rumble and the plaster to crack on the south wall. “Take your shower and then get the hell out of my house, and don’t you dare bother coming back here for the rest of the night either because I’m locking the goddamn _doors!_ ”

“Oh my god, Regina, your _magic—!_ ” Emma tried to reason, but the second she reached for her, Regina slapped her away. And then she slapped her again, this time across the face. As Emma brought her hand up to her stinging cheek, Regina snarled and gave into the need to make the house stop freaking shaking as she clasped on painfully to Emma’s other wrist.

“Fuck you, Emma Swan,” she seethed through her teeth, the house beginning to settle around them as the magic dissipated from her eyes. “How dare you think that _I’m_ the one that’s keeping us miserable. How fucking _dare_ you.”

“Well what the hell else am I supposed to think when you—”

“I don’t owe you an explanation!” Regina snapped furiously. “I’m allowed to have my own feelings, my own fears, and I’m not going to let you invalidate them. Now get the hell out of my sight so I can calm down. I don’t want to see you; not anymore, not tonight.”

“Fine, fucking _whatever,_ ” Emma grumbled, pissed off beyond all belief that this had somehow come back on her. Because how dare she ever want to make love to her, right? How dare she ever want to fix their relationship? What the hell ever; if Regina wanted her issues that badly, she could just have them.

Shaking her head, Emma ripped her wrist from the other woman’s grasp and retreated upstairs to the bathroom, fresh tears falling down her cheeks as her heart compressed in her chest. God, why, _why_ was this so difficult? Why couldn’t they just be happy? This was so fucking _stupid…_

As Emma stepped under the spray of the shower, she found herself hoping that Archie could work miracles. Because if he couldn’t, she was going to be tied to the one person who she both loved and hated most in this world, and they’d both forever be stuck in this endless loop of helping and hurting one another that, let’s face it, was even far too dramatic for freaking _fairytale_ characters.

And, if nothing else, at least half of them in this relationship _wasn’t_ one, and that had to count for something, right? Because Emma didn’t want to live like this anymore, it just wasn’t working.

**TBC…**


	27. Apologies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another heads up that I agreed to participate in the SQ Secret Santa on Tumblr, and because I’m _me_ I procrastinated like hell until, well… right now, lol. So I have to get that fic done by the 25th, which means I don’t know if the next chapter of this will be out on time. Although next Wednesday _is_ Christmas so even if it was done I’d doubt I’d be posting it on time anyway, since I’ll be busy doing family things. Anyway point is that it’ll most likely be late, so this is me apologizing in advance for that. Sorry!
> 
> Oh and FYI, there’s another alternate scene (aka, just stuff I scrapped) to this chapter posted on my [tumblr](http://obsessionisthenewblack.tumblr.com/). It’ll be under the tags ‘alternate scene’ and ‘TotH’.

**CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN  
Apologies**

“So… David said you guys wanted to talk.”

It had been at least ten minutes into dinner and neither of Emma’s parents had said a word outside of meaningless small talk about the weather and work. They had been stealing wary glances at one another from across the table, but that was about the extent of it; and yeah, Emma’s patience was starting to wear thin. It wasn’t like she had had the most stellar evening as it was; and if it were up to her, she would have preferred to barricade herself in her bedroom for the next twenty four hours just to save everyone else the misery of being around her.

But Emma had promised her father that she would come to dinner and, well… here she was. 

Mary Margaret cleared her throat a little awkwardly, pushing a piece of broccoli around on her plate. “Honestly, honey, we’re just a little concerned about… your mood.” And, okay, that was probably fair; it was complete shit right now, after all, and practically storming into the apartment while mumbling under her breath probably didn’t help anything either. “And we aren’t sure if having this conversation right now is the best time. Is everything… alright? Did something happen over at Regina’s?”

Silverware scraped idly against porcelain. “We just… got into it. It doesn’t matter.” Her jaw tensed then, and Emma had to push down everything she was feeling so she didn’t start crying again at the damn dinner table. Shaking her head, she stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork and amended emotionlessly, “Well, she kind of kicked me out for the night. I need a place to sleep, so can I maybe…?”

“Of course,” David answered without thought, and as Mary Margaret nodded in agreement, Emma shot them a tightlipped smile in gratitude.

“Thanks.”

Silence; uncomfortable, long.

“Do you…” Mary Margaret tried, shooting a hesitant look over at her husband. “Would you like to talk about it with us?”

Emma looked up from her food then, a disbelieving look plastered on her face. “What is that, a _joke?_ ” she snapped without thought to how rude that probably sounded, but seriously? Wasn’t their motto, ‘the more miserable Emma is with Regina, the happier we are?’ Why would they try to comfort her when it ran the risk of her becoming _less_ upset with the woman that they hated?

“Emma!” David chided her as Mary Margaret made a big show of looking wounded over her words. But come on, _really?_

“You seriously expect me to believe you _care?_ ” Emma asked them, still looking at them like they had both gone completely mental for even asking about it. But then something clicked and she looked accusatory and she asked, “Or do you just want to know because you get some kind of sick satisfaction in seeing our relationship fail? Because I swear to God—”

“No, of course not!” Mary Margaret exclaimed, looking offended that Emma would even think that. “Look, your father and I are aware that we weren’t the most supportive people in the world when it came to your relationship with Regina, but if you’re upset about something that happened, honey, we’re not just going to stand idly by and allow you to continue to be hurt by it. If it helps you then… then we would like it if you talked to us about it.”

“ _Believe_ me,” Emma told her strongly, thinking about why this entire fight started in the first place. “You really don’t want that.”

“We do though, sweetheart,” Mary Margaret continued to try, unable to get the hint. “We don’t want you to feel like you need to keep anything from us anymore, Emma, even if does happen to be about Regina. We’re your parents, and—”

“ _Mom,_ ” Emma stressed without thought, slamming her fork down on the table as she looked at the woman across from her. “I’m still sleeping with her, okay? And _that’s_ why we’re fighting, so can you just believe me when I tell you that you don’t want the details? Christ.”

Silence fell over the table again, the look on her parents’ faces appearing torn between being surprised and absolutely horrified. Emma sighed heavily and tangled her fingers in her hair as she avoided eye contact, internally berating herself for even admitting that to them out loud. But Jesus, could they not take the hint? They were the _last_ people she needed to talk about this sort of thing with.

Mary Margaret cleared her throat awkwardly. “Well,” she began, sounding a little distant. “I have to admit, that wasn’t the first sentence I imagined you using when you finally called me ‘Mom’…”

What?

Emma blinked, replaying her words over in her head. _Oh, shit._ She hadn’t even noticed; she was just frustrated because they wouldn’t drop the subject and the word just… popped out. Guilt washed over her face then, as yeah, that probably wasn’t the best ‘first time’ memory for her mother, and the blonde quickly tried to apologize, “I’m sorry, I just…”

“I think I need some air,” David said suddenly, apparently still stuck on the fact that his daughter was currently sleeping with the Evil Queen, and his chair scraped loudly against the floor as he abruptly stood. Nobody stopped him as he left the apartment, and the front door slammed loudly in his wake as he took out his internalized aggression on it.

Fuck.

“I’m sorry,” Emma repeated, hating how she always managed to make a shitty day even worse. It was like a talent at this point. “I shouldn’t have said—”

“No,” Mary Margaret interrupted, looking back up at her daughter. “Even if it was an accident, or a one-time occurrence, I’m… I’m still very glad you called me that, Emma. No matter what form it came in.” She gave her a soft smile then, but in an instant it was replaced by a resigned purse of the lips before Mary Margaret admitted, “I’m _not_ thrilled that you’re still sleeping with Regina though, but… it’s not like I can pretend that’s surprising either.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “You knew?”

“I had a feeling,” Mary Margaret admitted, although didn’t sound particularly happy about being right. “You’ve spent so much time with her lately; I assumed something was bound to happen sooner or later. And besides, despite what you tried to convince me of, I still don’t buy that Regina was wearing that turtleneck because you _strangled_ her.”

Well, technically the strangling thing _was_ true, but as Emma wasn’t about to admit to her mother that Regina got off on asphyxiation, she kept her mouth shut. Mary Margaret assuming that she was just hiding hickeys was the lesser of two evils, in the long run.

“Then why the hell did you let me stay with her this week?”

Mary Margaret stayed silent, suddenly avoiding eye contact.

“Oh my god,” Emma realized, her eyes widening. “What is this, some kind of reverse psychology shit?”

“At first…” Mary Margaret hesitantly admitted, making Emma’s jaw drop in offense. She held out her hands though to try to ward off her daughter’s impending screaming match. “Emma, please, don’t get angry with me. I just thought that if you… if you got her out of your system, if you had some proper closure, then it wouldn’t hurt you as badly this time around when she had to leave again, but I was—”

“If I ‘got her out of my system’?” Emma interrupted disbelievingly. “Are you _kidding_ me right now…?”

“—I was wrong.”

 _That_ made Emma stop. “…What?”

“I was wrong,” Mary Margaret softly repeated, like that would somehow make the sentence sound any less insane. “Emma, even though I may never approve of Regina, I—” The sound of the front door opening made Mary Margaret’s gaze flicker upwards, to what no doubt was her husband coming back into the apartment as she amended, “ _we_ , were wrong in focusing all of our efforts on keeping the two of you apart. We thought that… after everything that had happened, that maybe just trying to exorcise something so toxic from your life might…”

“Make us feel less guilty,” David finished for her, taking his seat once more. He was still a little stiff, but he didn’t look like he wanted to smash something anymore as he looked over at his daughter. “I’m sorry. I just… I needed a minute. I know you’re in an adult relationship but… no matter how old you are, to me you’re always going to be my little girl. That was not something I ever wanted to hear.”

“It’s not a relationship,” Emma murmured as she looked down at her plate of food, still trying to wrap her head around the fact that her parents were _apologizing._ It seemed kind of surreal, and completely out of left field; wasn’t Mary Margaret just lecturing her about Regina the other day? “It’s a codependent mess.”

“Which was why we were concerned,” Mary Margaret told her, which only caused Emma to roll her eyes at that blatant lie. The brunette let out a resigned sigh. “Well, that and your father and I’s history with her, of course. I won’t lie to you and say we were never biased, because we were; if we were to pick anyone for you in the entire kingdom, the last person we would ever consider would be her.”

“But she is your True Love,” David interjected, although didn’t sound exactly thrilled by that fact. More resigned than anything else. “And unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. You cannot help who you’re bound to; your mother and I know that more than most.”

“And we’re… we’re _sorry,_ Emma,” Mary Margaret stressed, the urgency in her tone causing the blonde to look back up at her mother, “for selfishly focusing on the only thing we thought we could fix, the only way we thought we could make a difference in your life, instead of addressing the one thing we really needed to. The one thing _you_ needed us to.”

Emma’s brow crinkled at that, her heart beginning to pound in her throat as she realized what the hell this might actually be turning into. And she… she didn’t know if she could handle it; if she could handle letting go of that anger and resentment yet. It was the one constant she’d had in a life continuously full of change. “What are you talking about…?”

“I was supposed to go with you… when you went through the wardrobe,” Mary Margaret admitted softly, emotion starting to strain her voice. “I was pregnant with you when it was being built, and your father and I… we didn’t believe you’d be born before Regina’s curse was cast; we believed that we had time. But as fate would have it, you were born just as it was washing the land. And I tried – believe me, Emma, I _tried_ to keep you within me long enough – but you were demanding entrance into the world and there was nothing… nothing I could do. By the time the wardrobe was finally finished, you were too far along and I couldn’t be moved.”

“I got to hold you in my arms for only five minutes,” Mary Margaret continued, her sorrow starting to take hold as her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “ _Five minutes_ until I had to let you go, and never know if I’d even see you again. And it kills me inside, every day, because it’s… it was my fault. After you were born your father… he believed our plan to be a failure, and that we would all be overtaken by the curse together, but it was _me_ who suggested that we put you through the wardrobe alone. _Me_ who believed it would be your best chance, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? You grew up _terribly_ , and it was… it was entirely my fault. I thought I was protecting you, Emma, I thought it was the right thing to do, but it was only the right thing for our kingdom and not… not for our little girl…”

Mary Margaret was weeping openly now, her husband’s arms around her in some vain attempt to comfort her. And Emma was just sitting there, _staring_ at them both with a painful lump in her throat and tears in her eyes as she struggled to connect this to reality. She had spent so long convinced that her parents didn’t want her, and even longer still wondering why she was given up. And then even after she knew, even after she realized she had been wrong, and that her parents _had_ wanted her, Emma never expected them to express any kind of regret over it. ‘The Greater Good’ and all that… sending her away saved their Kingdom, so what was one little girl in comparison to that?

“No, Snow, no matter how Emma’s life may have turned out, it _was_ the right thing to do; I know that now,” David insisted, which made both his daughter and wife turn sharply towards him; Emma’s in accusatory disbelief, and Mary Margaret in utter perplexion. “Because at least this way, she _had_ a life,” David explained, before turning towards his daughter. “To get you into the wardrobe, I had to fight off at least a half dozen of Regina’s men, and… Emma, your mother and I are truly sorry that your life didn’t turn out in the way that you would have wanted, or that _we_ would have wanted, but at least you were alive. And if Regina had gotten to you that night… you wouldn’t have been; and I will never regret saving your life. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“No,” Emma breathed, feeling a tear fall down her cheek as she seemed to be staring _through_ her parents, rather than at them. “No, Regina, she… she wasn’t going to kill me; she was just going to take me from you. I was supposed to be _her—_ ” But Emma couldn’t say it, and it didn’t matter anyway, for the two people before her seemed to understand.

They looked shocked. Appalled. _Disgusted,_ probably because of how her and Regina’s relationship turned out. And Jesus, Emma felt like she couldn’t breathe. This was just too much.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t—I can’t do this right now,” Emma stammered as she got to her feet, pushing the chair she was in backwards across the kitchen floor. First she gets into a fight with Regina, and now her parents were actually _apologizing_ for the life they had subjected her to and it was… her emotions couldn’t really deal with that right now. She was already upset enough as it was, and now it felt like something else was getting dumped on her that she didn’t know how to accept, because it just seemed so out of left field. Both of her parents had done a complete one eighty when it came to Regina and to talking about the past, that it just felt so—

Oh my god.

“She _told_ you, didn’t she?!” Emma exclaimed, realizing how this must have come about. Her eyes locked on Mary Margaret as she accused, “That’s what Regina was talking about with you in the kitchen, _that’s—_ ”

“Emma, please don’t get angry,” Mary Margaret tried, but it was too late for that. Emma felt like Regina had completely betrayed her trust; the entire _point_ was that her parents shouldn’t have to be told to do this. It had to come from them, and this… this hadn’t. This had come from Regina.

“Regina was just concerned about you, and she was… she was right,” Mary Margaret admitted, although sounded hesitant to even admit that fact out loud. Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she continued emotionally, “It was… _very_ selfish of us to never speak about this with you, solely because it made us feel terribly guilty. You deserve to know that you were loved – that you _are_ loved – and that we never wanted to give you up; it pains us every day to know that you grew up alone, and we are _so_ sorry for subjecting you to that. It wasn’t at all what we—”

“It doesn’t _matter!_ ” Emma exclaimed, furious and upset as her eyes brimmed with fresh tears. “It doesn’t even matter if everything you’re saying is true, because she went behind my back and—!” A frustrated noise slipped past the blonde’s lips as she tangled her fingers in her hair, just finding everything far too overwhelming right now to properly function. She just needed to get the hell out of here; get some air, get some space.

“I have to go,” Emma said in a rush, turning on her heel as she headed for the door. The world blurred as tears distorted her vision, and emotion choked up in her throat as she tried to run from everything she just couldn’t handle.

Problem was, it was hard to run from your own thoughts.

“No, Emma, please don’t leave—” David tried, but once his hand clasped imploringly on her arm, Emma immediately shoved him off. She was furious with Regina, upset that something she had so desperately wanted from her parents had come from somewhere it shouldn’t have, and she just didn’t want to be here. She _couldn’t_ be here. She just needed to be alone; it was the only way she might be able to handle this without feeling like she was suffocating.

“I just need some fucking space, okay? Please,” she begged, the words choking up in her throat as she ripped open the front door. Her parents kept begging her to stay, but the words sounded far away as the blood pumped in Emma’s ears and she ran out into the night.

Why did Regina have to ruin it? Why couldn’t she have just left it alone…?

[x]

When Emma had taken to drinking mouthwash for its alcohol content, she had thought she had hit rock bottom. But as it turned out, there was rock bottom, fifty feet of crap, and then her.

It hadn’t been a conscious decision on her part. In a way it was just an instinctual reaction that Emma had adapted as a way of coping with her problems, and right then she felt like she was being suffocated by them. Fighting with Regina in the morning, stress at work, then sex and emotions and _more_ fighting with Regina, followed by a betrayal of trust and words Emma desperately wished to believe but found that she couldn’t because of how they had come about seemed to weigh down on her all at once, and so yeah… she ran. She ran to the only thing she knew would always be there for her, should she need it.

And the worst part of it all wasn’t that she was currently huddled in the backseat of the town’s patrol car drinking her weight in cheap whiskey, it wasn’t that she was crying so hard that she could taste her own fucking snot mixed in with the booze; it was that Emma hadn’t realized the magnitude of what she was doing until it was already too late.

It hit her all at once, you know? The guilt, the disappointment, the feeling of being an absolute failure as she brought the bottle to her lips and allowed the liquid to scorch its way down her throat. It made Emma hate herself, and yet she had already started, so what the hell was the point of stopping now? 

So she drank; she drank until the tears stopped, she drank until the world blurred, and until she finally blacked out in the backseat of the cop car, allowing the pain of the waking world to fade to nothing around her.

[x]

The doorbell rang loudly through the manor the next afternoon.

Regina was practically frantic as she hurried through the foyer to rip the front door open, and she finally exhaled a relieved breath once she found Emma standing on her front porch. She looked entirely worse for wear however; she was still in the same clothes she had on yesterday, her hair didn’t look like it had seen a brush since she slept, and she wore large, dark sunglasses that she kept fiddling with uncomfortably as she leaned heavily against the porch bannister.

“Where the hell have you been?!” Regina demanded, her worry laying waste to anger as she realized the woman was okay; or, well, _alive_ at least. “When your mother came by to pick up Henry she said you didn’t come back to the apartment last night! Do you have _any_ idea how worried we were? You could have been—!”

“I slept in the patrol car,” Emma told her as she ran her fingers through her tussled hair, unable to make eye contact with the woman before her. “Needed the space, okay? I’m fine, so can you maybe not _shriek_ at me right now? I have a killer headache, and I want to just get inside and take some aspirin or something before Archie shows up, okay?”

“Oh, _you_ have a headache?” Regina snapped back without registering the faint sound of warning bells in the back of her mind. She was just too angry right then; she had been calling Emma since this morning and her phone had continuously gone to voicemail. “I’ve been beside myself all morning; how difficult would it have been for you to just turn on your phone and let me know that you’re alright? Honestly, Emma; do you think of _no one_ but yourself?!”

“You kicked me out last night, Regina,” Emma reminded her flatly, this look of disbelief on her face as she stalked past the woman in the doorway, heading towards the bathroom. “So excuse me if my first thought wasn’t to call the woman who literally _screamed in my face_ that she didn’t want to see me.”

“Then you could have at least called your parents—!”

“Fine, I fucked up!” Emma exclaimed in frustration once she grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet, the pills rattling loudly in their container as she gestured dramatically. “Okay, _I fucked up;_ is that what you want to hear? That’s basically going to be what this whole therapy session is going to be about anyway, right; ‘let’s count the ways Emma has fucked up’ so… Jesus, I can’t— You have _no_ idea what happened last night, and the last thing I want to fucking do is talk to you about it right now, so can you just _piss off_ and give me five minutes of space until we’re forced to hug and cry out our feelings? _Christ._ ”

Four pills were popped into the blonde’s mouth then by a trembling hand, before she filled up a glass with water and began to drink. And drink. And drink… And oh god, what Regina was seeing in front of her started to make _sense,_ this horrible kind of sense that made her stomach twist into knots and her heart beat harder in her chest and suddenly Regina felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“…Take off your sunglasses.”

“What?” Emma asked, rounding on her as she tried to look confused, but only seemed to look panicked instead. “No, I—I have a migraine, Regina; and the lights in here are bothering me, I don’t want to—”

“ _Emma,_ ” Regina interrupted sternly, her voice wavering with upset as she struggled to keep her emotions in check, not wishing to bring the house down around them solely on a hunch that she wished, _desperately,_ was wrong. Her voice was dangerously calm as she ordered, “Do as I ask, or I’m going to assume you have something to hide.”

Emma stared at her for a long time, looking terrified beyond all measure as she chewed anxiously on the inside of her cheek. The wait was agonizing and did nothing but further the brewing disappointment in Regina’s gut as it pointed to nothing else but a truth she didn’t want to hear, yet needed to know all the same. And then slowly, finally, Emma reached up and slid them off the bridge of her nose. She wouldn’t look at her though, and Regina’s heart hammered in her chest as she reached forward and gently coaxed the blonde’s gaze to meet her own.

She was immediately met with bloodshot eyes and a look of shame that left no question as to whether or not Emma’s many symptoms were merely coincidental. It caused a tightness in Regina’s chest that ached so fiercely that she couldn’t even find it within herself to be angry; she was just so terribly disappointed and saddened. She was supposed to be better than this; _stronger_ than this.

“I’m going to ask you this once,” Regina began softly, her voice still level as she kept her fingers stilled on Emma’s chin. She needed the physical connection, as it enabled her to keep her magic under control. “And if you lie to me, you and I are finished; do you understand me?” 

Emma swallowed, her jaw beginning to tremble as her eyes brimmed with tears. But she nodded her understanding while Regina tried to ignore the growing pain in her chest, and as the first tear slid down the blonde’s cheek, Regina quietly asked, “Did you drink last night?”

A shuddered sob echoed through the expanse of the tiny bathroom, and the question was followed by a nod that broke Regina’s heart completely in half. And then suddenly Emma was grabbing for her in a frantic desperation, afraid that her admission had condemned her. “I’m sorry, Re—Regina,” Emma pleaded through her tears, “Regina, please… _please_ don’t hate me…!”

She wanted to. Regina wanted to hate her, she wanted to be _angry_ with her; to scream at her and curse and make the woman before her feel badly about what she had done. But she didn’t; she couldn’t. In a way it just made Regina feel completely empty, the disappointment that had seeded into her gut hollowing her out and just making her feel rather lethargic. 

She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up.

“I don’t hate you, Emma,” Regina assured her in a voice that was detached and lifeless as she stared past the woman who was clinging to her to view their reflection in the mirror. It was such a tragically pathetic sight, but that was probably synonymous to their relationship at this point. “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you wanted to get better, but apparently… apparently I was wrong about that.”

“I do!” Emma insisted, grabbing onto Regina’s shirt in a desperate need to make her listen. “Regina don’t—God, don’t make me feel worse about this when I already fucking hate myself, okay?! I don’t want this, I _don’t!_ This is shit, all of this is _shit_ and yet I don’t know what the fuck else to do anymore!”

Regina wanted to snipe that she could try not drinking herself into an early grave for starters, but she didn’t have the effort. In a way it was like all of the hope she had inside of her that one day maybe, just maybe, they would be alright drained out of her all at once, leaving her kind of hollow and uncaring. Yes, Emma fucked up. Yes, it was terrible, but really… what else was new?

She should have known better.

The doorbell rang, and Regina pulled away from the crying woman who had been clambering all over her. “That would be Dr. Hopper,” was all she said as she turned without another word on the subject of the blonde’s mistake, allowing the numbness she felt to just settle in and take over.

And as Emma just fell to her haunches and tangled her hands in her hair as she continued to weep, Regina found that it was probably best this way, because feeling things was far worse than not feeling anything at all.

[x]

“You both are aware that I charge by the hour, correct?”

Silence. 

It had been that way for nearly fifteen minutes now. The three of them were situated in Regina’s parlor; the women on opposite sides of the couch, and Archie in an armchair across from them. Neither Emma nor Regina seemed to want to speak first, and Archie allowed the silence to go on, probably for curiosities sake as to how long it could continue. As it turned out, that was fairly long. However, this was clearly getting them nowhere, and so Archie tried to steer them into an actual conversation.

“Would either of you care to enlighten me as to what you were fighting about before I arrived?” Archie tried instead, which only made Regina straighten her back and side-glance the blonde beside her.

“We weren’t fighting.”

“No?” Archie questioned disbelievingly, his gaze landing on Emma for a moment. Her cheeks were still tear-stained as she leaned her elbow on the arm of the couch, fist pressed tightly up against her lips as she looked out the far window.

Still, they hadn’t technically argued, and so Regina responded simply with, “No.”

Silence fell over the room once more, except for the faint sound of sniffing from the blonde next to her. And then finally she spoke, however did not move nor turn to face them or the conversation. “I fucked up.” The admission was soft, the words breaking in her throat from the shame and self-hatred they carried.

Regina wished that made a difference.

“How so?”

Emma pursed her lips, her thumbnail digging into her chin as she continued to avoid eye contact with the both of them. “I drank last night. I was supposed to… I had stopped. Before.”

“I see.” Archie straightened in his seat then and addressed, trying to get her attention, “Emma.” She still wouldn’t look at him though. Or at her. She just continued to stare out the window, and so Archie continued understandingly, “It’s not uncommon to relapse during recovery; seventy five percent of alcoholics will relapse within their first year because they’re still developing the coping skills needed in order to live a sober life. What’s important, however, is that you recognize that it was a mistake.”

Emma still said nothing, but Regina’s chest constricted at the high percentage. She hadn’t… she didn’t realize it was that common. In the end though, did that really change anything? Emma still knew what she was doing was wrong while she did it; she still made the choice to drink. She had made the choice to destroy her own sobriety for the sake of making one singular moment in her life easier.

“Failing is not the same as being a failure, Emma.”

“Really,” Emma responded flatly, followed by a bitter laugh. “Because it sure as fuck feels like it.”

Archie didn’t contradict her feelings on the matter, only responding with a professional suggestion. “If you’re not opposed to it, I think it might be beneficial if you allowed me to council you separately,” he tried. “We don’t have a drug and alcohol program in Storybrooke at the moment, but it seems to me that you’re having trouble developing the tools you need in order to succeed with your sobriety. We could go over some coping skills to find what works and what doesn’t for you, and perhaps with some help you might find your addiction a little easier to manage.”

Emma chewed on the inside of her cheek as another tear slipped down her cheek, but as she sniffled and wiped it away with her hand, she turned toward him and nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good,” Archie replied, giving her an encouraging smile. And in a way it just made Regina feel terrible; watching Archie support Emma so freely when her first thought had been to completely give up on her. But God, she was just so _tired_ of having to pick up the pieces of both herself and Emma, and should the blonde have continued binge drinking, it would have dragged Regina down to a place she didn’t know if she could ever get up from. She didn’t want that. She was _terrified_ of that.

“I’m curious, however,” Archie continued, now turning his attention to Regina, who immediately stiffened in defense, “about why that didn’t seem to cause a fight between you both. I’m assuming this is a hardship in your relationship?”

Regina suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at that stupid question. “Obviously.”

But before Archie could ask her to elaborate as to why it didn’t cause an all-out screaming match, Emma interrupted with a sullen sounding, “She expected me to fuck up; that’s why she didn’t get mad.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Regina denied, even though saying it out loud made it feel like even more of a lie because yes, on some level, she did expect this. Not particularly that Emma would fuck up her sobriety, but that something would go wrong; because in their relationship when it rained, it _poured._ That’s just the way it was. 

“Then why the hell was your first thought that I never even _wanted_ to get better?” Emma challenged, looking as though that, more than anything else, cut her into pieces. “God, you fucking— you practically reject me yesterday, betray my trust _again_ , and now I find out that you don’t even believe in me? And you _wonder_ why I’m fucked up, Regina? Jesus fucking Christ!”

“ _Reject_ you?” Regina repeated disbelievingly, practically laughing at the woman’s ludicrous claim. “Since you’ve clearly forgotten, it was _you_ who fucked me and then left like I was nothing more than what’s between my legs! How on earth do you think that made me feel? If you want to talk about _betrayed—_ ”

“You told her!” Emma shouted, pointing at her accusingly as upset washed across her face. “I trusted you and you _told_ her! And now I don’t know if what they’re saying is even true, or just some bullshit to try to make me feel better! You took that from me, Regina; _you fucking took that from me!_ ”

“Ladies, please!” Archie interrupted, trying to slow down the blame game for one moment before everything exploded. Quite possibly literally. “Please,” he repeated, a little calmer now that both women were just staring at one another; Emma’s expression filled with blame, and Regina’s with surprise and upset. God, she didn’t think Snow would have been so stupid as to _tell_ her… “Let’s try to focus on one thing at a time.”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek as she shook her head and looked away, looking thoroughly betrayed. Regina swallowed the lump in her throat, suddenly feeling guilty for what she thought at the time was the right thing to do. Clearly, however, she had been wrong; it seemed to have upset Emma more than if she had just left it alone.

“Emma,” Archie addressed first. “You spoke of feeling rejected; do you want to elaborate on that?”

Emma took a deep breath and rapidly blinked her eyes, no doubt trying to keep her tears at bay before she answered him. “We had sex yesterday afternoon, and she… okay, we’ve always had violent sex, you know? That’s just what we’ve done since the beginning of our relationship, so it’s not like I hate it or whatever but just—fuck.” 

Sighing heavily, Emma continued, gesturing wildly with her hands, “Like I thought that the whole _fucking_ point of all this, of her trying to get me to forgive her, was so that we might actually stand a chance at being _normal_ again, and yet when I’m finally in this place where I want her for _her,_ and not just some kind of fucked up escape for my problems, it’s like she put up this wall to keep me out. And that’s just screwed up because now I’m starting to think that she’s just trying to hurt me like I hurt _her,_ and—”

“Not everything is about you, Emma!” Regina snapped, offended that she would ever think that she would be so callous. “You’re not the only one with trust issues now; you’re not the only one who got their heart broken that day! How can you honestly expect for me to allow you to make love to me when you still can’t even forgive me for what I’ve done? I have the right to only give myself in that way to someone I’m in a _relationship_ with, to someone who’s committed to being with me, and not just someone who’s latched on to me solely because it’s the only thing they know!”

“I’m sorry,” Archie interrupted, his brow furrowing in confusion. “You’re saying the two of you are _not_ in a relationship anymore?”

“Do you blame her, Bug?” Regina shot back, trying desperately to keep her anger and upset under control, but she could feel her magic pulsing at the surface, begging to be released. It was a fight she knew she would lose, yet struggled with all the same; for their sake, not for her own. “The Evil Queen is not loved by anyone. Of course she left me; I’m everything the _goodness_ inside her despises.”

“Right, because the drunken, self-loathing Savior of your stupid fairytale is obviously made of fucking rainbows and sunshine,” Emma snapped back furiously, like she couldn’t believe Regina would separate them like that; at least not anymore. 

But why wouldn’t she? Emma might be a miserable alcoholic, but Regina was a murderer and a tyrant. They were not on the same level; they weren’t even close.

“I’m not here to judge, Regina,” Archie reminded her calmly, keeping focused on the former queen for a moment. “And I’m certainly not here to persecute you. You asked for counseling for yours and Emma’s relationship, and that is what I’m here for; it is _your_ opinion that matters right now, not my own.”

Regina merely pursed her lips and stayed silent as she shook her head, leaning back against the couch. She didn’t want to look at them. Weighing herself next to Emma like that reminded her quite quickly of her own lack of self-worth, and in an effort to not revert back to feeling as though she were beneath Emma and unworthy of her affections, Regina turned her attention to the large window in the corner. The mantra of _you are good enough_ was repeated in her head over and over, in the hopes that maybe, at least once, it would finally ring true.

Emma may no longer be on this pedestal of goodness and light, but she was hardly down in the depths with her either. Still, nothing good came from Regina acting as though she was less than the alcoholic mess on the couch next to her, as it only furthered the broken nature of their relationship. They were both fucked up; perhaps in very different ways, but neither of them needed to be placed above the other, as relationships were about partnership. Equality. 

It seemed that as of yet, however, they had both been unable to come to an agreement upon which equal footing to stand.

“Before we continue, however, there’s something I need to know,” Archie addressed them both, causing two heads to turn in his direction. “I was under the assumption that you were still in a relationship, but that clearly isn’t the case. As such, I’m wondering what you both are hoping to achieve with therapy; are you merely wishing to coexist peacefully for the sake of your shared son, or are you hoping to mend your broken relationship and be together again?”

Silence.

This time it was deafening, suffocating; it felt as though it pushed all the air from Regina’s lungs as Archie posed a question that sounded simple, yes… but was so very, _very_ far from it. Both she and Emma had agreed that they were clearly bound together, and as such there was no escaping each other’s lives, but did that mean that they had to _be_ together? Did they even _want_ to be together anymore, or would they rather just learn to deal with each other’s presence in their lives without complicating it with romance and sex?

Archie seemed to notice the panicked expressions on both of their faces, and tried to assure them, “There is no right or wrong answer; it merely determines how I will approach our counseling sessions, that is all.”

No, that certainly was not _all._

If they answered differently, things were not going to get better; they were only going to get _worse._ One if not both of them were bound to get hurt, and as such, neither women seemed keen to be the first to speak. They kept stealing hesitant glances towards one another, Regina chewing on her bottom lip until it nearly bled, and Emma wringing her hands together in her lap with an extreme sense anxiety and fear that practically enveloped the rest of the room.

And yet, in the end, it was she who spoke first.

“I want… her. I need her,” Emma said finally, sounding as though her nerves were shot to hell from drudging up the courage to be the first to speak. Her hands were starting to tremble and her gaze found Regina’s, her eyes screaming with so much fear of rejection that it stole the breath from the brunette’s lungs. “I need you,” she repeated, trying to sound stronger. “I—I love you… like more than anything in this whole fucking world, you know? And—”

“Emma…” 

“And I want—I _need_ this to be fixed,” Emma corrected herself halfway though, her anxiety only coming to light now in the tight way that she continued to wring her hands together as she spoke, for her voice had finally become steady and firm with a sudden conviction. “I need to learn to forgive you.”

Regina felt like she couldn’t breathe. After everything that had happened, she didn’t honestly expect—

“Because I want to be with you again, Regina. I want you to be _mine_ again…”

**TBC…**


	28. Therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait. On top of getting a second job and not having much free time anymore, my tendonitis in my dominant wrist flared back up and I was basically crippled for the past two weeks. What fun -__- Anyway, as most of you are probably already aware, I have taken all of my fics off of their weekly update schedules and will get around to updating them whenever I have the time. I’m really sorry it won’t be as consistent, but slow updates are better than no updates at all, right? :/

**CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT  
Therapy**

“Oh my God, Regina, please—please say something.”

Emma looked as though she may actually start to have a nervous breakdown should Regina continue her silence, but she couldn’t help it. She was just _staring_ at her, trying to wrap her head around the fact that, when given an actual choice, Emma still chose _her._ Not the easier option, not the excuse to finally be rid of what caused the most drama and heartbreak in their lives, but _her._ Like, no matter what else happened, no matter how angry or upset she was about everything that they had put each other through, she still found Regina to be worth it at the end of the day.

And that caused Regina to forget about all else but the woman next to her, as she began to realize that maybe, should they really start to _try,_ they might stand a chance at being happy after all.

Emma looked as though she were about to fall apart in two seconds however, the long silence following her declaration beginning to make her paranoid and upset, and so Regina responded with the only thing she could think of in that moment; the one word that stood out more than all the rest. “…’Mine’?”

Emma released a breath, noting the disbelieving, yet undoubtedly hopeful look on the other woman’s face. “Yeah,” she breathed. “’Yours’… you know?”

Of course she knew. Of course she remembered. Those were the words they used before they found the courage to say the words ‘I love you’, and just the sound of them made a warmth spread so fiercely to Regina’s heart that tears stung the back of her eyes as she smiled at the hopeful blonde seated next to her. Her hand covered Emma’s then, fingers squeezing tightly in reassurance as she responded softly, “Yes, dear; I remember. And I would… I would very much like the same thing.”

Emma’s smile lit up her face, and it struck Regina right then how utterly miserable the other woman usually was, as the difference was completely astounding. And God, just realizing that made Regina’s heart break for her, for them both, because while deciding on where they wanted to be was a big step, it still wasn’t guaranteed that they would end up there. They had _so_ much work to do to get back to that place, and Regina hoped that they could manage it, because if they couldn’t it might shatter them more than if they never even bothered to try at all.

“I’m very glad you both are in agreement,” Archie said, giving the two women a small smile. And then, as if he were reading her mind, he continued, “From what I’m gathering however, there is a lot you need to work through before you allow yourselves to take that next step. Would either of you like to share what it is, specifically, that you need in order to move forwards? Setting goals may make achieving it that much easier.”

Regina and Emma both looked at each other, but the blonde nodded her head at her and encouraged, “You go,” as she untangled their hands. Apparently after the last thing she admitted, she wanted a break at being the one to do so first; Regina didn’t really blame her.

Taking a deep breath, the brunette tried to organize her thoughts before she spoke. “I… I need Emma to be willing to try to stay sober; I can’t be with her when she’s drinking, it’s emotionally damaging to both of us. And I understand that… slip ups can happen, but I’m still very disappointed that it did, and a little frightened that it may lead to more of them. I need to see Emma doing everything she can to prevent another relapse before I can even think of being with her again.”

Archie nodded as he scribbled Regina’s answer down on his clipboard. “Anything else?” he inquired when he looked back up at her.

Regina swallowed and looked down, fiddling with the hem of her button down shirt. She didn’t like admitting her own weaknesses, but if they ever wished for this to work, then she needed to be honest. “For quite a long while after the curse broke, Emma made me feel… very worthless,” she hesitantly admitted, despising how pathetic that made her sound. “And perhaps I did deserve her anger and her hatred, but that doesn’t change the fact that it hurt me in a way that nothing else has in a very long time. It caused me to… almost lose my sense of self, in a way; and despite trying to assure myself that there has to be some part of me that’s worth loving, I sometimes still struggle with acting like a person, and not some… not like some _mutt_ that’s begging for her scraps, because I have to be worth more than that. I have to be.”

“Regina,” Emma breathed, her face crumpling. “You are, of _course_ you are—”

But Regina held up her hand to stop Emma’s response, and the blonde let the words die in her throat, leaving nothing but a guilty expression in its wake. “I need an apology for that, but not right now,” Regina told her, needing Emma to understand that this wasn’t the time. She then turned back towards Archie. “Right now I wouldn’t believe it; not when I know she still holds so much resentment towards me. I want us to be able to look at each other and see equals before that can ever happen, otherwise we’re going to continue having problems in our relationship. Both of us have _terrible_ self-esteem right now.”

Archie nodded again whilst scribbling some more notes, before looking up at the blonde. “Emma?”

Emma still looked wounded and guilty over Regina’s words, but she blinked a couple times to try to clear her head before turning towards Archie. “I, uh… I’m still having problems forgiving Regina for everything she’s done,” she admitted. “I know that she’s sorry and I know she’s not that person anymore, but there’s still a lot of things that I just can’t—I can’t get over, you know? I don’t know how. And unless I do, I don’t think I’m ever gonna be able to look at her like I used to.”

“And I’m still…” Emma continued, picking absentmindedly at her jeans as she spoke. “I don’t really trust her. I mean, I _do,_ in a lot of ways – a lot of ways that really matter – but not fully, you know? And I honestly thought things were getting better with that until yesterday, when I found out she betrayed my trust _again,_ and—”

“Emma, I thought—it was supposed to be the right thing to do,” Regina tried, having her turn in sharing the guilt. “I thought it would help; your mother was an idiot with a fixation, I thought that if I just opened her eyes a little to what actually _mattered—_ ”

“I know why you did it,” Emma admitted, trying to look at things rationally instead of emotionally for once. “Believe me, I get it. But that doesn’t—I mean, I _told_ you that the entire point was that it had to come from them; that they couldn’t be told to do it, because now I feel like… I feel kind of like they’re placating me or something, just to make sure I don’t fall the fuck off the rails again. It defeats the whole purpose, Regina, and now I don’t know what to believe and I… God, I _hate_ that. I wanted this so badly, _needed_ it, and now that I have it I can’t even believe it’s real because of how it happened.”

“I’m sorry,” Regina softly apologized, feeling terrible because yes, Emma _had_ made it clear that they shouldn’t have had to be told. But she just thought, at the time, that it was the right thing to do. She thought it would help, but then again, she didn’t think Snow would have been so _stupid_ as to admit to her daughter that Regina had told her. But God, shouldn’t she have learned by now? Snow White couldn’t keep anything to herself even if her own life was on the line, for Christ’s sake. “I’m really very sorry, Emma. You’re right; I should have never told them. I wish I could take it back.”

Emma pursed her lips and said nothing. She still looked upset but she nodded, at least accepting Regina’s apology for what she had done, even if it didn’t change anything. She at least understood that the brunette regretted breaking her trust; regretted ruining the one thing she really needed. It came from a place of love though, Regina did it because she _cared_ , and in the end, that was probably why Emma was able to forgive her for it.

“Alright,” Archie interjected, taking a few last notes before he turned back towards the two women. He actually looked kind of proud that the two of them were able to work out _that_ , at least, with both minimal interference and a lack of raised voices. Which, Regina supposed… for them, may very well be revolutionary. “From what I’m understanding, what we should focus on first is forgiveness, as it will allow Regina’s concerns about a genuine apology to be addressed thereafter. However, before we get to that, I’m going to make a suggestion that neither of you will probably like, but I feel is necessary in order for your relationship to heal.”

Both woman shot the man seated before them a wary look. “And what might that be?” Regina questioned, not exactly thrilled by the prospect of having _more_ things in their relationship that neither of them would enjoy. They were having a tough enough time as it was already. 

Archie took a breath, looking a little hesitant over how this would be received before he suggested, “I think it would be beneficial if you both held off on the sexual aspect of your relationship… at least for the time being.”

“ _What?_ ” Emma immediately exclaimed, as though Archie had just told her that she needed to have a goddamn limb removed or something. Regina’s first instinct was to roll her eyes at that, as it wasn’t as though they needed sex in order to survive or anything, but the more she thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made her. She and Emma’s relationship _began_ with sex, and as such was a very predominant thing for them; and while Regina understood why Archie believed holding off on that might benefit them, a part of the woman feared that without it, they might find that they had nothing else.

Which was probably stupid, as loving someone encompassed more than just enjoying their body, but things had been so terrible between them lately that taking away the one way that they always knew they would relate to each other seemed kind of dangerous.

“Please don’t think I am judging you,” Archie began to explain. “But the sexual lifestyle you have always led with one another requires a fair amount of trust to be healthy, and it seems as though neither of you have that with each other anymore. On top of the fact that it could turn dangerous, Emma, you stated yourself that you used Regina’s body as a way of coping with your issues. That shouldn’t be what sex is about, and considering neither of you can agree on what it is you want from those experiences, I think it would be best if you both held off until you have decided to give your relationship another try.”

Both women were completely silent following that, which prompted Archie to ask outright, “Do you think you are able to do that?”

Emma sighed heavily and mumbled a resigned, “Yeah,” as Regina nodded her own compliance. Neither of them seemed particularly thrilled about it, but what Archie said was true; until they could trust one another, until they were willing to give all of themselves to each other, then perhaps it was best if they didn’t have sex complicating matters. It was no secret that it had become more unhealthy than not as of late anyhow. When they weren’t physically tearing one another apart, it seemed they were inflicting emotional abuse in its stead. That wasn’t… that shouldn’t be what being together is about.

“Good,” Archie praised with a smile, as though they were children who needed to be taught how to function like proper human beings. Regina scowled at the assumption, despite how much truth it seemed to bear. They were a complete mess; the both of them. As Regina tangled her fingers in her hair and leaned back against the couch, Archie asked, “Now are there any specific issues either of you would like to address?”

But before Regina could bring up the issue of Graham, and Emma’s clear upset with his death – more so than anything else she had ever done – the blonde blurted out, “The whole… not having a choice in this whole thing – it’s… uh, it’s fucking me up a little.”

Archie’s brow furrowed. “Not having a choice in what, exactly?”

“Being with Regina.”

The man in front of them seemed to look even _more_ confused by that, and he tilted his head in question as he asked, “What makes you say that? When I asked whether or not you wanted to be with one another, did you not answer of your own free will? That’s a choice, Emma.”

“No, I know,” Emma said, sitting up straighter as she gestured with her hands, as though trying to wave that off in order to make way for some sense. “I just meant, with the whole True Love thing, it’s like… no matter what we do, we’re always gonna be stuck with each other. And I’m not saying that’s bad or anything, or even that I don’t want it, but it makes me wonder whether I want it because _I_ want it, or because some unsayable force in the universe or _whatever_ is making me want it, you know?”

Regina stayed silent, understanding Emma’s concern with it despite having more acceptance of it than she. Archie however, seemed to look even more perplexed by that explanation than he did before he even had one.

“I’m sorry, you— you believe that… because of being one another’s True Love’s, destiny is forcing you to be with one another?”

“Isn’t it?” Emma questioned, suddenly second guessing herself from the surprise that had etched itself across their therapist’s face. Regina as well now looked confused, as she had thought the same thing as Emma.

“Of course not,” Archie told them, as though he were surprised neither of them seemed to realize. “True Love is merely another term for soul mates; two people who have been through many lives together, that is all. It isn’t an exclusively romantic concept, nor is it limited to being bound to one person; people are capable of having many True Loves in their lifetimes, and thus they can sometimes overlap.”

“How do you know this?” Regina demanded, as this clearly wasn’t common knowledge, right? Snow and Charming seemed to subscribe to the same theory she had, after all; so this wasn’t just her own misconception, if this were true.

“I read.”

Regina scowled. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not—that wasn’t my intention,” Archie quickly apologized, fiddling uncomfortably with his glasses beneath the weight of Regina’s glare. “But curses weren’t exactly uncommon in our world, nor were their remedies,” he continued. “I just assumed that surely you would have heard of it being broken by something platonic before, or perhaps even familial; there are many books about the subject due to its frequency.” 

“I… hadn’t,” Regina admitted, sounding so terribly confused. She had been so sure that True Love was solely a romantic concept that she hadn’t even considered the fact that it might not be. She wished she would have known before, as perhaps she could have put Emma’s fears of not having free will to rest long before this.

“So wait,” Emma interrupted, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her thighs. “You’re saying that being Regina’s True Love has nothing to do with why I _actually_ love her?”

“Being Regina’s True Love merely means that you’ve lived many lives with her before this one, and will continue to do so in many others,” Archie told her. “So no, that is not why you’re in love with her; you could have just as easily walked through this life with her as a friend or a confidant. She would have been important to you either way, but it was _you_ who chose to fall in love with her for everything that she is, not fate.”

Emma looked as though all her breath left her at that confirmation, and Regina nearly cried at the expression on her face. She looked shocked of course, but still undeniably _happy_ at the root of it all, for knowing that released a terrible burden that had been weighing on their relationship since the breaking of the curse. It was a freedom neither of them expected, and now that they had it, it seemed they didn’t really know what to do with it.

Regina’s hand was hovering over her mouth as she stared at Emma, who was trying to let that information sink in and sort out what it meant for them. And then she was looking at her, all this emotion painted across her face as she stared at Regina like she was finally seeing her for the first time, and the sheer intensity behind it suddenly brought tears to the brunette’s eyes. 

“Oh my god,” Emma breathed finally, almost looking as though she were falling in love with her all over again. “I love you. Like actually, _really_ … love you.”

The weight of her feelings caused Regina’s smile to momentarily falter as she struggled to keep herself from outright crying at the look on Emma’s face. “I suppose it would seem that way, yes,” was all Regina said in response, the words said slowly and barely above a whisper as her throat constricted tightly. She didn’t want to cry in front of Archie; god, she didn’t even want to have this _moment_ in front of the Bug, and yet it didn’t seem she had any control over how or when this was happening.

It was Emma who broke first.

A small sob ripped its way past her throat as she dismissed all else but the woman before her, grasping Regina’s face tightly between her palms as she kissed her fiercely on the mouth. Emotion poured from the blonde’s lips and Regina devoured it like ambrosia, feeling rather infinite as Emma breathed a confirmation that neither of them realized they had truly craved until that moment. It caused Regina to lose the battle within herself as a hot tear slid down the contour of her cheek, her eyes falling closed as she pretended, just for a moment, that it was just them, and that they were alone in sharing this moment together that they both knew they so desperately needed.

That ended as soon as Archie cleared his throat uncomfortably.

The two women separated immediately, suddenly very aware that they weren’t the only two people in the room, and as Emma’s cheeks colored a dark red, Regina quickly looked away and murmured a quiet, “I’m sorry, that was inappropriate.”

“It’s quite alright,” Archie assured her, although still looking a little embarrassed himself at having witnessed such an emotional display. “Despite it being nothing more than a misunderstanding, your misconceptions about True Love had clearly been hindering your relationship. With that resolved, it undoubtedly paves the way for more reconciliations, and for that I’m glad.”

Regina pursed her lips into a thin line but said nothing. The word reconciliation reminded Regina that they still had _problems_ , and while the entire point of therapy was to work through them, suddenly she found that she would rather leave them as is. Which was ridiculous really, as logically Regina knew she couldn’t live forever in this moment, but drudging up the bad when they finally had a glimmer of good just seemed really cruel right then. 

She just wanted to bask in this feeling; was that too much to ask for?

Apparently so.

“Regina,” Archie addressed then, and the brunette immediately felt her stomach sink in her gut. “When I asked about the issues you both had been experiencing in your relationship before, you looked as though you were about to say something before Emma spoke. Would you like to share what that was now?”

“No.”

It was so automatic, so instinctual, that it didn’t just take Regina by surprise, but everyone else in the room. Archie raised his eyebrows and Emma looked at her like she had six heads, as wasn’t it always her that was pushing them to talk about things? But right then Regina just didn’t want to, she just wanted Emma to keep looking at her like she was worth something, everything – _please_ – and yet despite not being ready to move onto the next moment in her life, the world kept on turning beneath her feet. 

Time stops for no one.

“No?” 

Regina cleared her throat and averted her gaze. “I merely meant that… right now doesn’t seem the time. That is all.”

“And why do you think that?” Archie pressed, reading her hesitant demeanor like a goddamn book. “If it’s an issue of great magnitude, Regina, wouldn’t you think it’d be better to discuss it in a safe and mediated environment, rather than on your own where things could get out of control?”

Of course it would be better here, but Regina just didn’t want to do it _now._ She didn’t want Emma screaming and getting upset all over again; she didn’t want to fight, she didn’t want to—

Sighing heavily, Regina fixed a glare on the man in front of her and crossed her arms over her chest. He _knew_ why she didn’t want to do it, she could tell by his expression. But it wasn’t him who said anything, it was Emma.

“Just say whatever you need to say, Regina,” she muttered, picking anxiously at her jeans. “It’s why we’re here, right? This is… this is how we get better.”

“You’re not going to like the topic,” Regina warned gently, because bringing this up had never warranted favorable results. But Emma just shook her head at that as she scratched her nails down her denim thighs in order to distract herself.

“Just say it before I change my mind.”

Regina took a deep breath, her gaze flickering to Archie before it laid rest on Emma. “Graham.” That was all she said, just one singular syllable, but it was enough to make the blonde pale and fiercely shake her head.

“No. No, nevermind, I take it back…”

“Emma, we need to talk about it!” Regina exclaimed loudly, feeling her stomach twist in her gut as the magic within her reacted severely with the anxiety this conversation brought about. She tried to fight it, but it was hard when all her focus was on how Emma was reacting, rather than what she herself was feeling in that moment. As the blonde launched to her feet and began to pace, Regina continued, “You need to tell me why he matters above everything else that I’ve done, I need to know—!”

“I told you I don’t want to fucking talk about it!”

“Why?!” Regina raged, her skin crackling with power as it ran hot like fire through her veins. Her own anxieties spiked something within her that was so intensely hard to control, and when Regina finally spoke of her own fears, her voice broke and she suddenly began to lose the battle raging inside of her. “Is it because… were you _in love_ with him…?”

But just as Emma rounded on her, face etched in surprise and disbelief, Regina found herself completely immersed in her own paranoia. It made her a slave to her emotions, to her instincts, and suddenly she was unable to keep multiple things inside of her at once. And so as Regina opted to hide how badly that thought wounded her, her magic shot outwards in its stead, expressing her pain and heartache in the form of completely shattering the television set. The sound was so loud that it startled Archie nearly out of his seat, and the spike of his own fear mixed with the magic that still resided in the manor suddenly left a befuddled cricket in the armchair instead of a grown man.

“Holy shit…!” Emma started, eyes widening at the very _real_ fairytale creature that had appeared before her eyes. Only once before had she seen people in their true forms – the day the curse was broken – and that day was filled with so much craziness that it was probably hard for her to process. But Emma had had quite a while to deal with reality since then, and as such while it still startled her, she didn’t end up dwelling on it. Instead, she instinctively reached for Regina to allow her to control her magic, and as their hands clasped together, Regina’s gaze found Dr. Hopper.

“I’m sorry, it was… that was an accident,” she apologized, feeling foolish for allowing her emotions to get the better of her like that. “This house is… unstable, where magic is concerned; and panic seems to be one of the driving factors in its manifestations. I honestly did not mean for any of that to happen.”

“It’s… fine,” Archie tried to assure her in a high pitched voice, although still sounding very confused about what on earth had just happened. Regina supposed it would be a little disorienting. “It was just unexpected; I wasn’t aware that any magic resided in Storybrooke.”

“It’s only here,” Emma told him with a heavy breath as she slumped down on the couch next to the brunette, still keeping a firm grip on her hand. She looked emotionally exhausted already and they had barely even begun; although perhaps she hadn’t been expecting this short reprieve, and as such the weight of Regina’s previously hidden fear was now washing over her in waves. “This is where the curse broke, but it broke… wrong, I guess, and everything’s all screwed up. I don’t know; it’s complicated.”

Archie – or perhaps now more accurately, _Jiminy_ – hovered a few feet above the leather of the armchair as he peered at the two women. “May I ask why it is that you two are holding hands? Given the intensity of your previous discussion, it seems a little odd.”

“I can control my magic when Emma touches me.”

“Oh?” Archie looked intrigued by that answer, but Emma just shrugged in response, which about summed up Regina’s knowledge on the subject. Neither of them really knew why it happened, just that it did.

“We’re assuming it has something to do with Emma being the product of True Love.” Which could very much be wrong, but it was the best theory they had thus far. It wasn’t as though they had a way to test these sorts of things in this realm, after all.

“Interesting,” Dr. Hopper noted, before flying over to his pad and pencil that had dropped on the ground. However after quickly assessing the situation with a once over and realizing that writing in this form probably wasn’t going to be achievable, he made a little disgruntled sound before returning to the chair. Regina tried not to look amused at his expense, but it was difficult; the pen was bigger than he was.

And then suddenly with another pop he was back in his human form, nearly falling off of his chair in surprise by the weight change of his own body. He held onto the armrest as he tried to get himself situated before pushing his glasses up on his nose with his forefinger. It really did look rather comical, but perhaps Regina was just trying to focus on something other than what was inevitably going to come. 

“Sorry,” Archie apologized as he got settled, grabbing his pen and pad from off the ground as his ears turned a bit pink. “Wasn’t quite expecting that either. It comes on rather suddenly, doesn’t it?”

“Mmm,” Regina murmured in response, trying to focus on anything other than the way Emma’s sweaty hand nervously gripped her own. She knew the conversation was coming back, and she didn’t want to deal with it just as much as Regina didn’t. The brunette swallowed and chanced a glance at the woman beside her, only to see Emma twisting a strand of hair between her fingers so tightly that the ends were beginning to split upwards.

After scribbling a quick note on his pad, Archie looked up at the two women across from them. “Now, before we continue the conversation at hand, can I ask that one of you elaborate on just what exactly the issue is between you two and our former sheriff?”

Regina briefly side-glanced Emma again while the blonde firmly set her jaw. Feeling her stomach twist into knots, Regina tried to justify everything she had done in her head while she admitted in an emotionless voice, “I killed him.”

“…Oh.”

It was as though those three words suddenly reminded Archie who exactly it was he was counseling, and he looked torn between being horrified by the information and scared Regina was going to do him next, all while struggling to maintain his professional demeanor. He fidgeted. 

Nobody spoke.

“Just… _tell_ me,” Regina implored Emma finally, unable to stand the silence. The weight of it stood to crush her. “I need to—was it because…?”

“Jesus, _no,_ ” Emma interrupted, finally turning to look at her. “Is it really that hard for you to wrap your head around being upset over someone’s death if you’re not _in love_ with them? It’s called human fucking decency, Regina; look it up.”

“If its human decency then why on earth haven’t you concerned yourself with all my other sins?!” Regina demanded, looking at Emma like she couldn’t fathom her train of thought. “I’ve killed many other people, ruined countless lives, and yet the one thing you seem to truly hate me for is—”

“God, you don’t _get_ it, do you?!” Emma shouted, her grip on Regina’s hand bordering on painful now. “Everything else, all the horrible things you’ve done, it’s just… they’re all just _stories!_ I get that they’re real but they don’t feel like they are; that place, those people, I’m so disconnected from it all. But with Graham… with Graham I’m _not._ He was here, I _knew_ him, and it’s his fucking death that reminds me of what you are, Regina! He’s not some story in some twisted fairytale; he was a good man who… who _died in my arms_ because you thought murder was a great way to deal with your fucking petty jealousy _bullshit!_ ”

“That was _not_ why I—”

“If you look me straight in the eye and lie to my face, Regina, I swear to god.”

The brunette faltered. Silence fell between them as Regina swallowed, averting her gaze and shaking her head whilst biting the inside of her cheek. Finally, softly, she amended, “I just meant that… jealousy, it wasn’t the only reason. He was getting his memories back, and I had to protect this town—”

“Another lie.”

“Fine, I had to protect _myself,_ alright?” Regina snapped, rounding on her. “The curse was falling apart and if I didn’t eradicate the weak link then it would have all come tumbling down around me. I would have lost everything, I would have lost _Henry—_ ” That thought caused her voice to hitch in her throat, but Regina suppressed the urge to cry again and just shook her head, hand twisting in Emma’s grip. 

“So yes, I killed him. I killed him to keep my son from knowing, truly _knowing_ that I was a monster and despising me for it. I killed him to protect everything I had built, and I killed him because I was furious in that moment that the idiot had chosen you over me. I killed him for so many reasons, Emma, and none of them even made a difference in the end; the curse still broke, and someone I loved still thought me a monster for all that I had done.” Her eyes connecting with Emma’s, Regina’s voice became soft and self-loathing as she finished pointedly with, “It just wasn’t Henry.”

Emma pursed her lips into a thin line and said nothing for a long time. Neither did Archie, who seemed content to let the two women get out everything they needed to say before he intervened. Finally, Emma’s eyes fell to their linked hands. “I don’t… think you’re a monster for all that you’ve done, Regina. That’s the point. I can’t connect any of that to reality in my head, so it’s like everything else doesn’t even matter. And this is probably really fucked, but I’m… I mean, I’m actually kinda glad that I feel that way, you know? Cause with Graham, it… god, it _sickens_ me to think about,” Emma told her, face washing with contempt and disgust as she shook her head. “And I can’t… I _don’t_ want this feeling to be multiplied. I don’t want to blame you for another twenty, fifty, a hundred deaths because then… then I might no longer love you; or worse, even after accepting that you did all those things, I find that I can’t stop… because what the hell would that say about me, you know? What the hell kind of person would that even _make_ me…?”

“It would make you a forgiving person,” Archie interrupted, which was good because Regina didn’t know what to say to that. It felt like she was falling apart; once again, not feeling worthy enough to be loved. “Emma, it’s no secret that Regina did some terrible things in the past, but when you look at her now, do you see the Evil Queen?”

Emma exhaled a hard breath. “I didn’t even _know_ the Evil Queen—”

“You knew a modernized version of her; the conniving, manipulative Mayor of this small town who still killed for her own gain. But is she still that same person? When you look at her now, what do you see?”

“I…” Emma’s eyes met hers, and Regina wished she could breathe. It felt like her throat was closing in on itself as she attempted to keep her emotions hidden inside of her. “She’s just… mine. My Regina. My… my everything. And it scares me because I… there’s more, isn’t it? There’s more to her than just what I see, and I’m afraid I’m blinding myself to everything else just because I love her; that I only see the good because it’s the only thing I want to see.”

“Emma, if all you ever truly saw was the good in Regina, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Archie gently reminded her, causing Emma’s gaze to downcast. “It’s understandable,” he continued, “to have been affected by Graham’s murder more than any other; you knew him, he was a part of your life, no matter how briefly. But he is not the only life that Regina has taken, and pretending he is won’t make forgiving her any easier.”

“What you need to understand is that, no matter how much we may wish it, we cannot change the past.” He paused for a moment then, and Emma seemed to realize that Archie was waiting for her full attention because she looked up at him again. “All we can do is shape a better future, which is why you both are here. There’s a difference between forgetting and forgiving, Emma, and should you really wish to rebuild your relationship with Regina, then you have to realize that those mistakes were a part of her past, a part of who she is, because pretending they aren’t will only delay the inevitable, as it’s never going to truly go away. It will always be a factor in not only her life, but yours as well.”

“Look, I know she’s not… I mean, I get that she’s not that person anymore,” Emma tried to explain. “I’d have to be an idiot not to; because I’m pretty sure that if she was, instead of allowing the town to banish her she would have freaking leveled it instead. But that’s the thing, you know? With the stories I’ve heard about what she’s capable of, that’s what I’d automatically assume the ‘Evil Queen’ would do. Yet I look at Regina as she is now and I just can’t… I can’t even see her _doing_ something like that. I mean yeah she has a temper and yeah I’ve seen her vengeful streak, but there’s a huge difference between manipulating circumstances to get someone thrown in jail and outright murdering hundreds of people to get her way.”

“Emma,” Archie addressed, leaning his elbows on his thighs as he looked at her. “Did you ever wonder that perhaps that might be exactly what Regina needs?”

Confusion masked over the blonde’s face. “What?”

“Perhaps she needs someone who can’t see her doing any of those things; who sees her as she is _now,_ and not what she once was,” Archie explained, and Regina felt her stomach twist into knots at how true those words rung. “Both you and your son are quite literally her second chance, and seeing as how you can’t imagine her ever being that evil, I think we can assume she has done well in that area thus far, wouldn’t you agree?”

Emma shifted in her seat. “I guess…”

“I understand your frustration that you feel as though you don’t know all of her, or all of who she was or what she’s capable of because you weren’t around then, but there are enough people who were that are going to remind her every day of what she used to be,” Archie continued. “There are enough people out there who don’t trust her or are still scared of her because of what she’s done, and Regina will have that hanging over her head for the rest of her life. So many of them are still going to look at her and only see what she once was, Emma, so perhaps the best thing for both of you is not to dwell on it as they are, but finally see her for who she _is._ It’s the only way to move forwards.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “But isn’t that… I don’t know, almost like forgetting? Cause you said—”

“I said there was a difference between _forgiving_ and forgetting,” Archie reminded her. “Should you find you are able to forgive her, that doesn’t mean you’ll forget what it is that she’s done, and you shouldn’t. Always remember who she used to be; if for no other reason than to be reminded that things have changed. Talk about the past with her, understand the magnitude of the things she has done, but do not dismiss or dwell on them. They are what they are, and no amount of hiding them away or dissecting them further is going to change what happened, and it certainly isn’t going to further Regina’s efforts of becoming a better person in the future if all anyone is ever concerned about is her past.”

The two women looked at each other then, Regina still unable to speak as emotion had tightened her throat throughout this entire exchange. It was such a deep fear of hers; that Emma would never be able to forgive her, that _Emma_ would look at her like she was nothing but the Evil Queen. Regina wanted to be honest with her, as she didn’t think she could embark on a true relationship with all of her terrible secrets like that being hidden, but it was just so difficult to watch the horror play out on the blonde woman’s face after each and every one she found out. It made Regina wonder which one would finally break her; which one would finally be too much and Emma would never be able to look at her with love again.

“And Emma?” Archie added, the sound breaking the two women’s staring contest as they turned back to look at him. “Forgiving her would _never_ make you a bad person. It’s quite different from condoning what she’s done; please remember that.”

Emma’s fingers twisted in Regina’s as she took a deep breath, nodding her understanding. It didn’t fix anything, not by a long shot, as they still had so much to talk about in regards to Regina’s past, but it did open a door that could allow them to finally move past all this… or to have the realization that they never could. It was the latter part of the variable that scared Regina quite terribly.

Archie seemed to see that though, and so he addressed her next. “Regina, you’ve been awfully quiet throughout this conversation. Is there anything you’d like to say?”

“I…” The word broke from how tight her throat had gotten, and Regina had to clear it before she could speak again. “There’s a part of me that doesn’t want Emma’s love without her forgiveness, because it feels like a lie. I’m directly responsible for ruining her life; for having her grow up in terrible situations without people who love her, no matter how much she tries to put that blame on her parents. But then there’s another part of me that… is afraid that should she truly know everything that I’ve done, that she’ll leave me and never look back. I’m afraid that she’ll never be able to forgive me.”

“Because you’re unable to forgive yourself?” Archie ventured.

“No,” Regina told him, much to the man’s surprise. “Because forgiveness is something that comes hand-in-hand with regret, and I can’t find it within myself to regret the things I’ve done.”

Archie looked taken aback by that statement, but it was of no surprise to Emma, who had already heard the same thing once before. “Can I…” Archie tried, clearing his throat as he attempted to keep this professional, despite the fact that among the list of things Regina didn’t regret was the ruining of his own life and many others. “May I ask why not?”

“Because of Henry,” Regina answered without hesitation. “Everything I’ve done, whether it be good or bad, brought me to him. I will _never_ regret that. I will never regret casting the curse and coming here; I can’t.”

“I see,” Archie responded, his expression coloring with more understanding than it previously had. “But do me a favor and think for a moment, about all of those events separate of what they reaped. Taking Henry out of the equation, do you regret the woman you love growing up alone because of you?”

Regina looked at him like he was stupid. “Of _course,_ but that doesn’t—”

“It does,” Archie interrupted. “It matters. You hate that Emma had a terrible childhood because of _your_ actions, and that is regret, Regina. Even if you wouldn’t change a thing because it brought you to your son, you can still feel terrible about it and wish there had been some other way. And _that_ is what makes you worthy of forgiveness.”

‘Worthy of forgiveness;’ the words sound so strange, as for most of her life Regina never felt worthy enough for anything. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? As a child she learned to act like she was nothing as it appeased her mother and kept the punishments at bay, so when she needed to appease Emma she basically reverted to the only thing she knew that worked. She acted like she was less than her, allowed Emma to walk all over her, and for what? It accomplished nothing. If anything, it just screwed them up more.

Still… knowing it was problematic didn’t automatically fix the issue. Regina had a lifetime of either being walked on or doing the walking, that learning to stand on equal footing as someone was going to take time. Regardless though, knowing she was worthy of Emma’s forgiveness was the first step. In the end though, Regina knew that being worthy of it didn’t automatically mean that she would get it. She just had to hope.

“I think you both should schedule a time to talk privately,” Archie instructed. “Perhaps have Emma’s parents take Henry for a couple hours so you’ll know there will be no interruptions. And when you do, try not to blame one another, try not to yell; just _listen_ to what the other has to say. If things do get heated and you believe you’re unable to do this without a mediator, then by all means call my office and schedule another appointment; my door is always open.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Regina responded quietly, nodding her head in recognition. Archie smiled as he gathered up his things.

“Well I think that’s enough for today,” he said. “It’s clear there’s a lot to work through here, and it wouldn’t do for either of you to become overwhelmed by it.” As he rose from the chair, he continued, “While we only agreed on this one session and Emma’s addiction counseling, like I said before, my door is always open. Please do not hesitate to call should you both need another session. And Regina, that goes for you as well, should you believe you could benefit from individual counseling too.”

Regina said nothing, but nodded her understanding. She wasn’t sure right now if she wanted to do that, but it was nice to know that she had the option whilst still in Storybrooke, despite the fact that it wasn’t going to be for long. But due to that, perhaps it might be better to allow him the focus of working with Emma, instead of herself. They had such little time here, after all, and no other councilor in the outside world was really qualified to deal with the kinds of issues that they had.

Well, outside of perhaps Emma’s drinking, but that still stemmed from issues that she wouldn’t be able to talk about outside of this town.

Archie showed himself out, and once the door closed behind him, the two women looked at one another from across the couch. They hadn’t moved and their hands were still linked together. “So,” Emma said softly, eyes meeting Regina’s. “What now?”

Dusking her thumb lightly over Emma’s palm, Regina looked down at their hands and took a deep breath. “Now,” she answered quietly, “I suppose we figure out when we want to have that talk.”

**TBC…**


	29. Answers

**CHAPTER TWENTY NINE  
Answers**

Knuckles rapped lightly on the bedroom door that was just slightly ajar. The woman situated between the sheets and the duvet looked up at the sound, placing her book down on the bedside table before taking off her glasses. “Hey,” Emma said softly in greeting, giving Regina a small smile as she entered the room.

“How did it go?”

“He, uh… he decided he wants to see him,” Emma answered as she sat next to the other woman, being careful to keep herself at a respectable distance. They might be in a slightly better place now, but things were still very fragile, and as such it was probably better that they didn’t let anything distract them. And being close to Regina? Well, that had always proven to be pretty damn distracting. Emma worried her bottom lip though, still not entirely sure that doing this whole thing with Henry _now_ was the best idea, and Regina’s brow creased as she assessed her demeanor.

“You still don’t approve,” she noted.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you _do._ ”

“Believe me, dear, I do not approve of even that man’s _existence_ in the slightest, but delaying the inevitable isn’t going to change anything,” Regina answered with a small sigh of relentment. “We both know that Henry was going to choose to see him eventually, because he’s a curious child and that would have won out in the end. I’m merely—”

“No, trust me I get why we should just get it over with,” Emma responded. “And I get the whole ‘killing two birds with one stone’ thing when it comes to us needing a babysitter so we can have our talk. But… don’t you think we should wait at least another day? We have so much shit going on tomorrow already with Gold—”

“I would rather we have that talk as soon as possible,” Regina told her in a clipped tone, still ruffled over the fact that Emma had gone to Gold without her permission. That had already been discussed earlier though – or rather talked about in loud, angry tones – but in the end Regina knew they had no other choice, as she didn’t know the spell that they needed to find out whether or not this whole curse business was true. “Whatever Rumple does or does not prove tomorrow morning is irrelevant to that, and should it bear discussion, we can do that at a later date.”

…Seriously?

“Regina,” Emma implored with a soft sigh. “I think you’re prioritizing things a little backwards, here. If one of us is cursed—” 

“It changes nothing,” Regina interrupted firmly. “Life will go on as it always has; miserable and bleak. And yes perhaps we could find a way to change that should we know who is responsible – if anyone is in fact responsible for it at all – but it isn’t as though the world is going to implode should we become aware of it. It can wait, Emma; but we… we can’t.”

Emma frowned. “It’s not like we’re on the edge of a cliff, Regina—”

“We are,” Regina insisted, looking so anxious and panic-ridden that Emma felt a little disoriented by it, because it was though they had completely switched roles. The session they had with Archie seemed to make her a bit calmer, more accepting of their relationship, but as the hours passed since they all spoke, Regina only seemed to grow more frightened by what was now looming over their heads, threatening to either complete or utterly destroy them. “There’s still a lot you don’t know about me, and should we put off this conversation then it’s likely we’ll never have it at all. We do that, Emma, and you know we do; we ignore important things in favor of having brief moments of happiness, but I think we’ve proven time and time again that that doesn’t work. We need to do this, and we need to do it soon.”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek as she looked at the woman sympathetically. While she understood Regina’s point, as they did do that more often than not, it was as though Regina was just trying to barrel through something that clearly frightened her just so she could get it over with; maybe even because she believed that Emma would never truly be able to forgive her after knowing everything, and so she wanted to have the other shoe drop before she allowed herself even a small semblance of happiness. Which conflicted pretty badly with what _Emma_ wanted, as she was afraid of the same thing; but instead of just getting it over with, she’d rather prolong it with the hope that should everything come crashing down, then at least she was able to be happy for a brief moment.

But the blonde sighed softly, knowing that if nothing else, she probably owed Regina this. For so long she’d been selfish in their relationship, doing things because they made things easier for _her,_ and not caring whether or not it did the same for Regina. And maybe it was for a stupid reason, but after realizing that she loved Regina for her and not because fate dictated that she should, Emma felt like she had to really _try_ now; because this was real, not something fabricated. And that… that was rare; that was special. “Fine,” Emma relented. “I’ll call Neal in the morning and let him know.”

Regina exhaled a small breath she probably didn’t even realize she had been holding. “Thank you.”

Emma nodded, her own anxiety over the conversation beginning to spike and yet trying desperately to ignore it. They had to do this, and maybe Regina was right to want to get this over with sooner rather than later. Maybe if they had to break up… it would hurt less this way; and maybe if they didn’t, then they had more time to be happy, instead of constantly being anxious about the weight of Regina’s terrible secrets. Either way, she supposed they would find out tomorrow.

Emma released a long breath as she moved from Regina’s side. “Anyway, I should probably get to bed—”

“Did you—” Regina began, looking up at Emma and making her pause before she stood. “Did you tuck him in, or should I…?”

“Nah, I got it,” Emma assured her. “Why it took so long; he wanted a story before bed.” Scrunching up her face, she waved her hand a little as she amended, “Well, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Yeah, he…” Emma smiled softly as she revealed, “kinda wanted to be the one to tell a story tonight; of the Evil Queen and the Savior’s happily ever after.”

Regina’s eyebrows rose in surprise as a conflicting range of emotion flickered over her features. Emma understood how she felt; like on one hand it was sweet and both of them hoped that Henry’s optimism would win out, but on the other it might turn out to be terrible if he’s so invested in their relationship and all it ends up doing is falling apart. But instead of bringing all that up, Regina just schooled her features and asked curiously, “Oh? And how did that go?”

“Well we lived in Disney World, for one.”

Regina snorted and Emma cracked a smile. “That sounds more like Henry’s happy ending then ours.”

“Yeah well, every kid wants to live in Disney World, can you blame him?” Emma responded with a chuckle. Smoothing out the duvet beneath her, Emma bit her lower lip for a moment before looking up at the woman next to her. “Do you think we should maybe… bring him? You know, like after we’re all settled and everything. He’ll finally be out in the real world; maybe we should let him take advantage of that.”

“You want to us to take a vacation… as a family?” Regina asked softly, uncertainty mixed with fear and hope swirling so deeply behind her darkened eyes that Emma had to look away from the intensity of them. She shrugged noncommittally.

“I don’t know. Maybe. If we’re… if things are—you know, _better,_ or whatever. Yeah. Why not?”

Regina pursed her lips to try to hide the intensity of her smile as she looked up at her. “That sounds… fun. I think Henry would enjoy that.” Emma nodded her head, picking at the bed sheets a little shyly before Regina added somberly, “But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know what the next day or week or month is going to bring…”

“No, I—I know,” Emma assured her, meeting Regina’s gaze. “It was just an idea. We obviously don’t have to decide anything right now; we got too much other shit going on. Just thought it’d be a cool thing to do; maybe in the summer or whatever, if things are… you know.” Shaking her head, Emma rose from the bed to head towards the door. “Anyway, I should…”

“Yes, it’s—it’s getting quite late,” Regina finished for her, but didn’t look all too thrilled about Emma leaving to stay in the guestroom, and truth be told, Emma wasn’t either. She wanted to be close to the woman she realized she truly loved, despite all the rockiness still present in their relationship, but sharing a bed tended to lead to other things; especially after the emotional rollercoaster of a day they just had. And Archie… well, he basically had put them on sex probation. 

So separate bedrooms it was.

“Night, Regina,” Emma said softly as she leaned against the doorway, hand hovering over the light switch on the wall until Regina gave her a slight nod, and Emma switched it off. The room delved into darkness and as she turned, Emma really wished that she didn’t have to crawl into a cold bed all alone. In the end though, at least it seemed like she wasn’t the only one who didn’t favor the separation right then as a soft, wistful voice carried into the darkened hallway.

“…Goodnight, Emma.”

[x]

“I’m warning you once; if you try anything, I swear to God I will scatter parts of you so far across this town that there won’t even be a _hope_ of putting you back together for your sad little funeral.”

“So distrusting,” Gold chided through a chuckle, looking more amused by Regina’s threat than anything else. He did however, pause his hand mid-air in offering to Emma, instead of merely grabbing for it like he was previously intending to do. “Might I remind you, that this is a favor _you_ called in? If you would like, I could walk out of this house right now and leave you to your cursed fate; it’s up to you.”

“Emma called this in, _not_ me,” Regina reminded him sternly. “Quite frankly I still have my doubts that there even _is_ a curse.” Eyes flashing, she began to advance on him. “It would be so easy for you, wouldn’t it, to just use something like that as an excuse to get close enough to Emma; to take whatever power she has inside of her and leave her with nothing? After all, my life has been terrible, so why _not_ use that as an excuse…?”

“You forget, dearie; I was not aware of Emma’s ability until _after_ I suggested there could be a counteracting curse,” Gold told her, which promptly caused Regina’s gaze to shift towards Emma for confirmation, who nods. That little piece of information only came about when they realized Gold could do nothing from his side of the barrier, which was _due_ to his theory that a counter curse was prohibiting it from breaking correctly. 

Regina scowled, still looking untrusting, but said nothing.

“Besides, it’s doubtful that whatever’s inside of the Sheriff that allows her to be used as a conduit would even work the same should it be drained from her; therefore she’s worth _far_ more to anyone alive than dead,” Gold added with a smirk, obviously just trying to rile Regina up, which the woman played into without a second thought.

“If you so much as—!”

“Alright, _enough!_ ” Emma exclaimed, stepping between the two to separate them. She was already in a mood from having to deal with her parents this morning, which she was so not ready for, and the last thing she needed right now was the two of them fighting. It wasn’t like they had a lot of time to do this before Snow and David came back, and the entire point of them even taking the kid out for breakfast in the first place was so they could safely get this done without Henry in the house. “Gold, stop being a dick. Regina, I can take care of myself. Now can we just get this over with please? _Christ._ ”

Regina didn’t even look at her, she was still just glaring at Gold, but the man did turn his attention towards Emma as he shot her what could only be classified as a creepy smile and held out his hand once more. “As you wish.”

Emma roughly clasped their hands together, setting her lips into a tight line. 

The man then pulled out what looked like something straight out of Harry Potter from his inside coat pocket, and Regina was immediately on the defensive again. “What the hell are you doing with a fairy wand?” she demanded. 

“Fairy magic is the only thing that can detect a curse, dearie,” Gold answered, though his tone was more condescending than anything else. “Or would you prefer it if I just _guessed?_ ”

“Wait a minute, then why the hell do we need you?” Emma asked, realizing that this confrontational situation probably could have been avoided entirely. “We could have just gone to Blue.”

“Ah yes, I believe the _good_ fairy would bear no issue with helping the Evil Queen, don’t you?”

Right, okay… maybe not. 

“I hope you both are aware that this will in no way give you all of the answers you seek,” Gold warned them as he held the wand near Regina’s head, apparently deciding to do her first. “Although any magic will leave traces of its caster – a fingerprint, if you will – it is unlikely I will be able to identify it; knowing how someone’s magic feels usually only comes from intimate experiences, and it’s doubtful I’ve ever been involved with whoever did this.”

Emma wanted to ask, “What about Regina’s mom?” because well, she could easily read between the lines of Henry’s book – and they totally had some kind of kinky student/teacher thing going on back in the day – but she was pretty sure Regina would pop an aneurysm at the insinuation and so Emma did nothing but purse her lips and stay silent. Besides, it didn’t really make sense that it would have been Cora anyway; for one, she seemed too ambitious on Regina’s behalf to hinder her in any way, and for two, apparently the curse would have died with its caster, and as far as Emma was aware, the bitch was dead.

“Just get on with it,” Regina clipped impatiently, her hands resting on her hips to try to offset her nervous fidgeting. It seemed she wanted to know as badly as she _didn’t_ want to know, and Emma bit the inside of her cheek as she watched her sympathetically. She hated that someone could have done this to her; deserving of it or not.

Gold then moved the wand downwards over Regina’s form, almost if he was trying to scan her. But Emma felt nothing, nothing at all, and Gold must have realized he wasn’t pulling anything from her as a flicker of frustration shown in his eyes and he moved the wand downwards once more, almost in an aggravated huff as he tried again. Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong? Why is nothing happening?” Regina asked, confusion masking over her face as Gold’s expression began to grow a little more frustrated.

“It isn’t as though syphoning magic from someone in an already unstable magical environment is easy, Your Majesty. Perhaps a little patience is in order.”

“It’s easy for Regina,” Emma pointed out, which seemed to only aggravate Gold further as he tried once more. But his emotions were starting to get the best of them and instead of his magic figuring out whether or not Regina was cursed, the armchair in the corner of the room burst into flames.

“Jesus Christ!” Emma exclaimed, nearly jumping out of her own skin. Regina, thankfully, had a much quicker and much better reaction as she slapped Gold’s hand out of Emma’s before taking it in her own, distinguishing the flames. It wasn’t quick enough though, and the chair was charred and ruined.

“I _liked_ that chair!” Regina raged, furious.

“Apologies,” Gold responded, although he didn’t sound very sorry at all. He sounded ticked off. “But it seems I still cannot control my magic, even with the Savior’s help. I’m going to assume that whatever it is that allows you to control it when you touch her is _only_ reserved for you; perhaps due to her being your True Love, but I’m uncertain.”

Regina actually looked relieved by this prospect – as she had worried what others might do should they be able to use Emma for their own gain – but Emma threw up her hands in frustration. “So now what?”

“Just give _me_ the spell,” Regina demanded. “And the wand, should it be vital to casting it; I can do it myself.”

“The book is in my shop,” Gold informed her. “As I wasn’t expecting it to be needed, I didn’t bring it. Perhaps if you come by later—”

“Later isn’t an option,” Regina told him, her patience quickly running out as she quickly grabbed a hold of both of their arms. And then suddenly they were in Gold’s shop, a puff of smoke signifying their arrival as Emma’s stomach lurched uncomfortably and she swayed on her feet, not used to traveling like that in the slightest.

“God, I feel like I’m gonna puke.”

“Then please do so in a waste bin, dear; I’d rather not get the cleaning bill.”

Emma rolled her eyes as she leaned on Gold’s counter, trying to breathe through the nausea. She didn’t know how they used to do this all the time, but maybe they were just used to it.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Your Majesty, but aren’t you supposed to be under house arrest?” Gold questioned, a challenging eyebrow being raised in her direction as he headed towards his bookshelf.

“Then perhaps this is something that would be better kept to yourself,” Regina countered. “Unless you wish the Charming idiots to throw me back over the line before we can find a way to break the original curse correctly.”

“And why should I care about that?” Gold challenged, his fingers dancing along the spines of old books as he searched for the one that was needed. “I have my son already, after all.”

“Please,” Regina scoffed, rolling her eyes. “It kills you that you can’t access magic; especially when I can. Breaking the curse will once again put us on even footing; whether it be with magic or none at all.”

Gold said nothing, probably because he didn’t want to admit that it bothered him. Instead he pulled a book from the shelf and turned, placing the heavy object on the counter with a soft bang. Opening it, he found the spell in record time before pushing it towards the brunette. “This is what you’re looking for.”

Emma peered down at it. “You can _read_ that?” she asked in surprise; it just looked like a bunch of weird symbols to her.

“Spells are not meant to be _read_ , Miss Swan,” Regina told her, as though she were speaking to an ignorant child rather than her on again, off again romantic partner. Emma scowled at her tone, but Regina just picked up the book and instructed as she took her hand, “Get behind me; I don’t want you inhaling it.”

“Inhaling…?” Emma began to ask, looking perplexed as she took a couple steps backwards. But before she could finish the question she got her answer, as Regina blew across the pages of the book and the words – symbols, whatever – literally flew off the page in a puff of smoke. The woman inhaled it through her nose, eyes closed as she took it all in, and when she opened them again Emma had to stifle a gasp at the swirls of purple behind her eyes and the look of pleasure etched across her face.

It was kind of terrifying honestly, but it was also sexy as all hell. Regina almost looked like she got off on it, and it did things to Emma that she was supposed to be suppressing. Biting her lower lip, Emma shifted the weight between her feet as she said uncomfortably, just to break the silence more than anything else, “I feel like I just saw you snort a line or something.”

“Mmm,” Regina hummed as her eyes fluttered closed again for a brief moment, apparently still feeling the effects of the spell. Emma scrunched up her nose.

“Ooookay. Getting kinda weird with Gold in the room…”

The man was staring at her with this gleeful little smile on his face, like he was a drug dealer watching a client become addicted, and was beginning to get excited about it because it meant more money for him. It was seriously creepy; not to mention really awkward considering Regina looked like she just came in her freaking pants.

“Sorry,” Regina apologized, the word sounding wispy as she opened her eyes once again, showing Emma they had returned to a normal color. “It has just… been awhile; I forgot how intoxicating new spells can feel. I didn’t—it wasn’t my intention to make you feel uncomfortable, and I apologize.”

“…Right,” Emma responded flatly, not really liking the line that was being toed here. Regina told her once that she had become addicted to magic, but it had seemed – up until right now anyway – that she had a handle on it; she was able to do stuff in moderation and not let it get out of control. The raw _pleasure_ that fell across her face at learning a new spell however made Emma feel a little uneasy, because despite Regina handling her issues far better than Emma handled her own, an addiction was still an addiction, and there was still the possibility of taking things too far should they start to feel far, far too good. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Regina murmured in agreement before holding out her hand towards Gold, who placed the wand in her hand. “Allow the wand to guide you,” Gold instructed. “The spell you learned was solely so you could use something designed for the Fae; it is the wand itself which holds the power to give you the answer you seek.”

As Regina held the wand hesitantly in her hand, seemingly suddenly afraid of a real answer, Emma bit her bottom lip before asking, “…Maybe you should do me first?”

“To what end?” Regina asked. “You know as well as I that should one of us be cursed, the likelihood is that it’s me. You’re the favored child of Snow White and her idiot prince; no one despised your existence save me, and _I_ certainly didn’t curse your mother’s womb.”

Right, because she wanted to steal her as a baby and raise her as her own, and a curse on the child she wanted would have probably been counterproductive to that goal. Which was still really weird by the way, but Emma tried not to think about it; she had enough insane shit going on as far as mothers were concerned, like Mary Margaret being the same _age_ as her. Still, Regina was probably right as far as the likelihood was concerned, and Emma hated that because it kind of made it seem like Regina was alone in this, which she was not.

“Fine, just… do it,” Emma responded softly, nodding her head at her as she took hold of Regina’s hand once more. The brunette took a deep breath as she prepared herself for the worst, before finally allowing the wand to trace the outline of her body.

Emma’s phone rang.

“Shit,” she breathed as she looked at the flashing name on the screen: Mary Margaret. Regina stopped mid-motion, halting the spell as she looked at her in confusion. “It’s my mother.”

“What’s wrong?” Regina asked, eyes widening in worry. “Is it Henry?”

“I don’t—” Emma tried, because how the hell was she supposed to know when she hadn’t even answered the phone yet? But she just shook her head and told her, “Hold on.” Putting the phone up to her ear, she answered, “Hello?”

“Emma, _where are you?_ ”

Crap.

“What do you mean, ‘where am I?’” Emma responded in a confident tone, despite her gaze meeting Regina’s with an ‘oh shit’ look on her face. “I’m at home. I mean— I’m at Regina’s; we haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Then why haven’t you been answering when we called for you?” Mary Margaret countered. “Surely even if you were upstairs—”

“We are,” Emma quickly lied, because what the hell else was she supposed to do? If they found out Regina left the house, shit was going to go down. “We’re uh… in Regina’s room, doing… I don’t know— _things,_ alright? We’ll be down in a second.”

Before Mary Margaret could respond, Emma quickly hung up the phone and looked at Regina. “We gotta go. _Now._ ”

Gold looked like he was about to protest, but Regina turned to him as she grabbed ahold of Emma’s hand once more, telling him, “We’ll return the wand after we complete the spell.” And then, before Gold could tell them that he wasn’t going to allow them to just _take_ his property, the two women were gone in a puff of purple smoke, materializing in Regina’s room.

Emma practically fell onto the bed face-first, groaning from the nausea. 

“Get up,” Regina hissed, grabbing Emma’s arm to pull her to her feet. “If your mother sees you on my bed—”

Mary Margaret chose that moment to practically slam open the door, looking like she was on some kind of mission. However, she apparently didn’t expect to see the two of them actually standing in Regina’s room, because she stopped short and began to look embarrassed by her own actions.

“What on earth do you think gives you the right to just _barge_ into my bedroom?” Regina snapped, letting go of Emma’s arm. 

“I… I’m sorry,” Mary Margaret stumbled, her hand still gripping tight on the doorknob. “I was just… worried. I know you both were meeting with Gold today, and after no one answered when we yelled upstairs, I just thought—”

“Well we’re _fine,_ Mary Margaret,” Emma told her firmly, despite knowing ‘worried’ was probably a lie. She looked determined to catch Regina in the act of doing something wrong, more than frantic that something could have happened to her daughter. “We were just… preoccupied, and didn’t hear—” But at the word ‘preoccupied’ the pixie haired brunette noticeably blanched, making Regina smirk in amusement while Emma assured her, “No! Not like—that wasn’t what we were doing.”

“Oh come now, dear; we’re all adults here. Surely your mother would understand needing a little ‘us’ time…” Regina purred, being purposely antagonizing to the woman who had barged into her bedroom uninvited. Mary Margaret looked horrified; Emma looked exasperated. Regina smirked as she slipped past the woman in her doorway and finished, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go attend to my son.”

“Regina…” Emma whined, rubbing her forehead as the woman left. She didn’t look back however, and Emma was stuck with her mother who, despite knowing that she and Regina’s sexual relationship hadn’t ended when they broke up, still looked absolutely horrified by the prospect that it could have happened not ten minutes prior.

Emma sighed heavily as she slumped against the wall, wishing that for once the two of them would just stop antagonizing each other; but that would just make things way too easy, wouldn’t it?

[x]

It ended up taking a fair bit of convincing to assure Mary Margaret that that _wasn’t_ what they were doing upstairs (although in the end, was it any of her business if they were?) before Emma finally addressed the real reason her mother had been hanging around for so long after dropping Henry off, and assured her that yes, they would most definitely talk again at some point about how they left things during their last conversation. Emma understood that her own insecurities weren’t entirely her parents’ fault, and after everything that had happened with Regina that day, it just seemed like one shitty situation on top of another and she just exploded.

She owed them a chance to explain themselves, and she owed it to herself to actually listen for once.

Neal came by the manor promptly at six o’clock to take Henry out to a movie, followed by a burger at Granny’s so they could have a chance to actually talk afterwards, and as expected, Regina immediately went into defensive mommy mode. She ended up giving Neal a list – an actual _list,_ mind you – of approved movies that he could see, along with a full rundown of Henry’s dietary needs, before informing Neal in a subtle yet effective way that if he didn’t have their son back by ten o’clock then he would lose the ability to procreate. 

Neal looked like he didn’t know whether to be pissed off or scared by her threat, but at least he had chosen to forgo an argument once Henry came downstairs to greet him. And God, that was… difficult to watch. On one hand, Emma wanted to be happy that Henry was finally connecting with his father, but on the other, she was still so afraid that once Neal got a taste of parenthood, he was going to bolt in the other direction and leave Henry with nothing. 

But what could they do now? What was done was done, and now all they could do was hope for the best.

“So,” Emma said softly as she leaned against the wall, trying desperately to ignore the sudden bout of anxiety that had gripped her chest at the thought of what was to come. “Where do you want to… do this?”

For all of Regina’s insistency that they get this conversation over sooner rather than later, now she looked just as panicked as she twisted her hands together and shifted the weight between her feet. Her gaze shifted to her left. “The study, perhaps?”

Emma gave a slight nod in agreement before following the brunette into the other room, awkwardly stuffing her hands into her pockets as she kept her head down. But before she slumped into one of the chairs near the fireplace, Emma turned towards the other woman and asked, “Are you… sure you want to do this now? I mean we have the spell to do, and maybe—”

“The spell can wait.”

Right. Okay.

Emma’s eyes fell on Regina, who looked a little lost as she momentarily stopped where her decanter used to be. The manor had been devoid of alcohol ever since they returned however, so Regina’s habitual movements halted as Emma’s stomach twisted uncomfortably in her gut before looking away. She didn’t want to think about drinking, even though out of every conversation they’ve ever had, this one would probably require it the most.

“Do you… want me to get you some ice tea, or…?” Regina tried instead, fumbling through awkward pleasantries despite the fact that with them, they really weren’t needed anymore. Still, maybe it was easier to fall back on old habits.

“I’m fine.”

“…Alright.”

Emma chewed absentmindedly on her bottom lip before finally slumping into one of the armchairs with a heavy sigh. She didn’t know what to ask; she didn’t know where to begin. Her gaze found Regina, who was still standing rather awkwardly over by her desk, like she didn’t know what to do with herself. “Do you want to sit down?” Emma tried, but Regina just shook her head as she exhaled a long breath.

“I’d rather stand.”

Maybe it made her feel more in control in a situation where she had absolutely none, so Emma didn’t argue. It must be nerve-wracking for her, to practically wait for an interrogation. Problem was, Emma didn’t really _want_ to interrogate her. Yes, they needed to talk about things, but it was the very last thing that she ever wanted to do. Emma just wanted things to magically get better, but apparently that wasn’t an option.

Silence fell over the room for a long moment.

Finally, Emma looked into the flames of the fireplace and said, “You… mentioned the other day, about the curse?” Regina was silent as Emma picked invisible lint off her jeans, just to give her hands something to do. “That you… you lost the two most important things in the world to you in order to cast it.”

“I did,” Regina confirmed softly.

“…What were they?”

Regina was silent for a moment, the only sound in the room being the nervous clicking of her nails against the surface of her desk. “In order to cast a curse of that magnitude, a sacrifice was required,” she responded, tone low and eyes downcast. “I needed to… cut out the heart of the thing I loved the most; it was the only way the spell would succeed.”

Great, more _murder._

Emma closed her eyes as she ran her hands over her face, wondering how this, how any of this, was going to be _okay._ “Who did you kill?” she asked finally, the words forcing their way out of her throat despite not wanting to know at _all._

Regina swallowed. “I… Do you—do you remember when I told you about my horse?”

Emma looked over at her, brow furrowing. She had assumed Regina had killed a _person,_ not a pet. But she nodded, remembering the conversation they had when she was detoxing. “Yeah.”

“As sad as this may sound, Rocinante was… he was my best friend,” Regina explained softly, a pained look crossing over her face. “I wasn’t allowed friends growing up, and as such, my horse was the closest thing to a companion for me. I loved him as though he were my family.”

“But…?” Emma asked, sensing there was an amendment coming.

“But,” Regina continued with a soft sigh. “It… it wasn’t enough, and in the end I had sacrificed him for nothing. I had thought perhaps… because my love for him wasn’t tainted—”

“…Tainted?”

“I loved my family,” Regina tried to explain, although it sounded like just the thought of it was tiring to her; like that love weighed her down. “But I also hated them for certain things that I… seem to have never fully gotten over. I thought that resentment would cause the spell not to work, but it seemed I was mistaken; perhaps because, in the end, we were bound by blood, and blood magic had always been quite powerful.”

Bound by blood… “So wait, you killed one of your family members?” Emma asked, wracking her brain to try to remember who Regina said she was related to, save her mother and father. But there was no one, and after remembering that Regina had said Cora was dead, she asked, “Was it your mother?”

As terrible as it sounded, Emma wasn’t quite put off by the idea of it. Yeah, killing people was fucking horrible, but she also knew that Cora used to abuse Regina. In a way, that kind of… justified it.

“No,” Regina corrected, shaking her head. “My mother… I had banished her to Wonderland on my wedding night, and a few weeks before I cast the curse I feared that she would find a way to come here with me, or perhaps that the curse would sweep that land as well. As such, I… I hired an assassin to take care of her.”

“You… what?” Emma asked, blinking heavily. Hiring an _assassin;_ that was… hardcore. And not in a ‘bad ass’ way at all, it was just a… really thorough way to take care of a problem. And in knowing that Regina didn’t have any issue with taking lives back then, the fact that she didn’t want to face Cora and kill her herself ended up speaking volumes. 

She was _terrified_ of her.

But then suddenly Emma remembered something, a conversation she had overhead in the town’s singular jail cell when Regina had shared it with… “Hook,” Emma realized, looking up at her. “You sent _Hook_ to kill your mother?”

Regina pursed her lips and nodded.

“And he actually managed to?” Emma asked, sounding surprised. Because seriously, the man didn’t look _that_ capable, and even with her minimal knowledge of Cora and the power she held, it seemed like a bit of a stretch.

“…Yes,” Regina answered, although it sounded like her throat had constricted around the word, making it painful for her to utter. Despite everything that Cora had done to her – abused her, killed her lover – it seemed she apparently still held love for her. It was something Emma couldn’t understand, but then again, when she had abusive parental figures, it was just in the foster system; people that were in and out of her life in the blink of an eye. Cora was a constant in Regina’s life that, at the end of the day, seemed to conflict her feelings about what she had been subjected to.

“So who did you…?” Emma began, until she ran through the last option she had. “Your _father?_ ”

Henry Mills’ crypt was in Storybrooke though, so Emma had assumed he had died here. But maybe she just brought him over, maybe—

“It isn’t as though I _wanted_ to,” Regina told her, still sounding a little choked up through her defensive tone. “I loved my father, despite a part of me resenting him for never saving me from my mother. He was still a kind man, but I was… I was _miserable,_ Emma. I hated my life, I hated _myself._ I was on this never ending quest for vengeance that seemed like it would never be sated unless I did something of great magnitude and even then… even after I cast the dark curse, it didn’t make anything better. Maleficent had been right.”

“Right about what, exactly?” Emma asked, her conflicting feelings of horror over Regina killing her own father and the instinctual jealousy about hearing about the woman’s past lover causing her voice to become strained. She didn’t want to think about either.

Regina sighed heavily, leaning against the desk as she looked out the far window. “She told me that casting the curse would leave a hole in my heart,” she told her softly. “A void that could never be filled. I didn’t—I _couldn’t_ believe her, because that was it; that was my last chance, my _only_ chance to finally be happy. I had to take it, no matter the cost, as it was either that… or give up entirely.”

The way Regina said those last words caused an uncomfortable feeling to twist in Emma’s gut, as it sounded more like she had been preparing herself for death rather than admitting her defeat in her war against Snow White. Regardless of knowing how unhappy Regina had been, and regardless of knowing that she had once been borderline-suicidal in her own frantic desperation for happiness at one point, Emma still hated hearing about it; it made her heart hurt.

“Regina, do you think… I mean, you said the curse left ‘a hole in your heart’,” Emma began, trying to think logically instead of emotionally right now, as she found that might be the only way she could ever get through this conversation. “Do you think that might be… _why_ you’re cursed? If you are, I mean.”

“No,” Regina told her, shaking her head as she took a shuddered inhale of breath, trying to get a hold of her own emotions. Tears had been prickling the back of her eyes since the beginning, but as of yet she hadn’t allowed them to fall. “Should that be the case, then that void would have dissipated when the curse broke; it was a _part_ of the original curse, therefore it could never conflict with it.”

Oh.

Well, it had been a theory, at least.

“All magic comes with a price, Emma,” Regina told her, sounding regrettable about it. “That emptiness that I feel… it seems that was it.”

“Yeah but, you ended up… I mean, you killed your _dad,_ ” Emma rationalized. “You killed ‘the thing you loved the most’; shouldn’t _that_ have been the price?”

Regina just shrugged lifelessly as she sighed. Apparently, it had been so long ago that it didn’t even really matter to her anymore; she was just unhappy, and that was that. Emma thought that was _crap,_ as obviously the thing she loved the most should have been a big enough price, but in the end, what did she know? Magic was about as foreign to her as Japanese.

Still, it didn’t seem right.

Silence washed between the two women for a moment, before something Regina said nagged at Emma so much that she had to voice it. “So… when you say that you feel empty… it’s—is it like a constant? Even with… I mean, even with me and Henry, you…?”

“I love both of you,” Regina told her softly, although she sounded so very sad when she said that. “Of _course_ I do, but something has always felt… off; as though a part of me is incomplete, and until I find that part of myself, I’ll never be able to truly feel content with the love that I feel and receive. Almost as though all of it is a dream that I’m constantly afraid I’m going to wake up from, which makes me fear getting too attached to it.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe you just have depression?” Emma ventured, as it sounded as though Regina’s brain was doing this to herself. “Cause there are pills for that.”

Regina gave her a disbelieving look, like she was stupid for even asking that, when wouldn’t it be plausible? Maybe it was too ‘real world’ a problem for Regina to fathom, but they were in the real world _now_ anyway, so why couldn’t it be a factor? 

“It’s the curse,” she insisted. “It’s the price.”

“You were unhappy even _before_ the curse, Regina—”

“It’s different!” Regina exclaimed, sounding frustrated that Emma would even pursue this when she believed she had all the answers she needed. “It feels different; please just believe me when I tell you that, because it’s far too complicated to explain.”

Emma sighed, relenting with a quiet, “Fine.” She didn’t want to argue; they had a lot of things to talk about tonight, and whether or not Regina should see a mental health professional on the regular was not one of them, no matter how inclined Emma was to believe that they probably both could do with a hefty dose of antipsychotics.

Silence fell over the room again as Emma turned away from Regina and looked into the fire. There was a question she was burning to ask, and yet at the same time didn’t want to at all, as she feared the answer. But she had to know, didn’t she? That was… that was the point of all this; for her to know everything. For her to try to _understand_ everything, no matter how difficult it may be.

Gathering up her courage, and bracing herself for an answer she didn’t want to hear, Emma finally spoke. Her voice was soft, hesitant; afraid. “How many people have you killed, Regina?”

Regina sucked in a sharp breath. It seemed she too had been waiting for this question, yet was afraid to answer it as much as Emma was afraid to hear the answer. “Personally, or…?”

“Yeah.”

“I… I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “Dozens, perhaps. It was so long ago.”

Emma closed her eyes and released a long breath, placing her fingers on her temple as she tried to process that. “And indirectly?” she asked, although she probably didn’t want to know that either.

“Hundreds, at the very least,” Regina told her, sounding so terribly ashamed about that; at least now, after all these years, in front of _her._ “But you have to understand, Emma; it was a different time, a different place. I was fighting a war, so of course my soldiers had to—”

“No, trust me, I get that your life was like a freaking episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ or whatever, but it’s just—it’s hard to imagine, you know? Dictating and ruling over everyone, I get; I saw you as Mayor, but leading an _army…?_ ”

“As Dr. Hopper said,” Regina responded, her voice low and eyes downcast as she found it so very hard to look at the woman who was meant to be interrogating her. “Perhaps what I’ve needed is someone who cannot picture me ever doing such a thing.”

Emma fell silent, her lips pursing into a thin line as she looked over at the woman across the room. She felt guilty then, even for dwelling on these types of things, because she understood what it was like to always be defined by your past. As a foster child, she was labeled as a bad kid before she even did anything to deserve the definition. And as an adult, once anyone found out about her previous crimes and her stint in jail that resulted in a child being born behind bars, she was viewed like a second class citizen; someone to look down on, someone to be wary of, despite the fact that she had done nothing wrong since she got out of jail.

Emma had always hated it, and now she was doing the same thing to Regina. Quite frankly, it made her feel like an asshole.

“I’m sorry,” Emma apologized as she looked over at the brunette, who still wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I know… I really _do_ know that you’re different now, Regina; and I swear to you I’m never going to see you as the Evil Queen because I have no idea who she really was, and I’m glad for that. But if we’re gonna do this, if we’re… if we’re gonna try to make this work, then I should know about this stuff, shouldn’t I? Just as much as you should know stuff about me.”

Regina’s gaze finally settled on hers, but the corners of her eyes crinkled in confusion. “You wish to tell me about… _your_ past?”

No – in fact, there was a lot of stuff about Emma’s past that she never wanted to bring up again, and would prefer to let die in the deep recesses of her memory – but if she was forcing Regina to go through this, shouldn’t she go through the same? Relationships were a two way street; a fact that unfortunately, they both have had a very hard time learning. One of them was always on a pedestal above the other, reaping what they were owed for the transgressions against them, but where the hell had that ever gotten them? _Here?_

Emma didn’t want to be here anymore. 

“Yeah,” she answered, leaning her head against the side of the armchair as she looked up at the other woman. “I mean, if you want to know. It’s only fair, right?”

Regina’s eyebrows rose in surprise, followed by the corners of her lips turning up into a gentle smile. Maybe, finally, they were doing something right. Emma nodded her head towards the chair next to her. “Come on, sit down,” she told her, figuring if they’re evening the playing field right now, then they should probably feel like equals in other ways. “We’re probably gonna be doing this until Henry gets back, so… you know, might as well be comfortable.”

She kept her voice light and shrugged, like it made no difference either way, but Regina could see right through that, and for once Emma was glad. She knew Regina felt ostracized in Storybrooke, but she didn’t have to with her. Even if this conversation was difficult, there wasn’t a reason for them to be separated like this; all it did was further the lack of self-worth that they both – although Regina especially – constantly struggled with. Emma didn’t want that.

For once, she wanted them to get _better._

And so when Regina finally crossed the room and sat down next to her, Emma returned the woman’s gentle smile with one of her own, and finally started to share some of her own secrets that she had kept buried for far too long from the one person she knew she could actually trust them with. 

**TBC…**


	30. Support

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And if you look to your left, you’ll see pigs flying over the frozen wastelands of hell, lol.

**CHAPTER THIRTY  
Support**

“Hey… you okay?”

Neal looked concerned, and Emma realized that her cheeks must still be splotchy from crying. She hadn’t expected her talk with Regina to elicit that much emotion, as she had spent a great deal of her life burying everything she felt about her past in order to disconnect from it. As it turned out however, the trust she had in Regina must have broken the dam she had built, and once she began talking about it, everything rushed from her rather violently and unexpectedly.

Her loneliness, her lack of self-worth, her helplessness… it had crippled Emma as a child, so much more than the abuse she had been subjected to in a few of her foster homes. In the end, those wounds could heal; but the scars left on her heart would always be with her as long as she lived. It was why she had such a hard time forgiving her parents for giving her up; she felt like she couldn’t erase what was permanently etched on her soul. Being an orphan wasn’t just something that happened to her, it was a part of who she was. Without that, would she even be the same person anymore?

What was worse though, was that by the end of it all, Emma was starting to feel stupid for ever having offered to share that part of her life. By comparison, Regina’s own had been far shittier, and so it just felt to her like she was whining about stuff that barely even mattered. Regina however, at least seemed happy that she had chosen to talk about it, but maybe that was just because it steered the conversation away from her. 

In the end though, it was probably for the best that Emma had shared what she did, because it at least allowed Regina to know more about her. For so long, the scales had been drastically uneven, so maybe this way they could at least start to feel like they were somewhat on the same level.

And if there was one thing they desperately needed in their relationship, it was to find a balance.

Emma’s palm immediately went to her cheek, needing to make sure it wasn’t still tear-stained as well as splotchy, as she waved the man off with her other hand. “Yeah, it’s… nothing,” she dismissed, before quickly changing the subject. “How did it go with Henry?”

Regina had been on the kid the second he had walked in the door, leaving Emma to deal with Neal, who was left standing rather awkwardly on the porch. Regina didn’t even let him say a proper goodbye. Not that Emma was surprised in the slightest, but she did feel a bit bad for the guy because once upon a time… that had been her. So she could relate.

“It was good,” Neal responded, smiling. It was genuine, and not at all filled with the anxiety Emma expected him to have had after trying to bond with the son he hadn’t known he had for ten years. “We had a lot of fun. Henry’s a good kid; really smart too.”

“Yeah well, all the credit for _that_ goes to Regina,” Emma responded, shoving her hands in her jacket pocket as she leaned against the railing. “Only thing we can really take credit for is the kid’s good looks.”

“You probably more than me,” Neal amended, nodding his head towards her with a small smile, no doubt just trying to flatter her to get on her good side. Even still, Emma smirked, unable to help herself.

“Not gonna argue with that.”

Neal laughed.

Emma’s smirk eventually faded as she pursed her lips together, her eyes shifting towards the house. But before she could ask Neal if he and Henry had made any other plans, the man interrupted with, “Seriously though, are you… okay? Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard that…”

“What, that I’m a miserable drunk?” Emma filled in for him, her tone suddenly defensive as she snapped her head towards him and arched an eyebrow. See, this is exactly the reason why she hated small towns; everyone always knew everyone else’s business, and gossip spread like wildfire.

“Among other things.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sober now and in counseling, so don’t waste your energy worrying about me,” Emma shut down quickly, despite the fact that she had now only been sober for a grand total of a day and a half, and she didn’t even start her addiction counseling with Archie until tomorrow. “And _what_ other things?”

“Regina’s sentencing.”

“Oh.” Emma blinked, taken aback for a moment because she thought the ‘other thing’ was going to be about her. “What about it?”

“Look, you can tell me you’re not together all you want,” Neal responded, one eyebrow rising in her direction, “but I have eyes, Em, and I know that you’re in love with that woman. I know because… a long time ago, you used to look at me like that.”

The corners of Emma’s mouth creased down into a frown. “Neal…”

Neal held up his hand to stop her. Apparently that hadn’t been the point to this. “I’m not trying to get pity, and this isn’t some backwards attempt to get you back. I know I screwed up, Emma, and I accepted that a long time ago and moved on. But even though I’m not in love with you anymore, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. So yeah, I’m worried about what her being banished is going to do to not just you, but Henry too. It’s a fucked up situation, you know?”

“No, I… I know,” Emma responded, anxiously twisting her hands together. She didn’t want to tell Neal not to worry about it, because outside of Ruby, no one knew that they were going to leave together yet. She didn’t want that information getting back to her parents before she was ready to break the news to them; they had enough drama in that department as it was. “But we’ll figure something out. Regina’s still allowed to stay through Henry’s birthday so we… we have some time.”

Not a lot of time, but still.

Neal was silent for a moment while he chewed on the inside of his cheek, his gaze never leaving the woman across from him. And then finally he spoke, having drudged up enough courage to say what it was that he was thinking. “I know it’s not my place to be saying this,” he began, looking a little apprehensive about how this might be taken. “But I know a little something about letting someone you love go. And even if it’s for every good reason in the book, it still _sucks_ , Emma; and it’ll be something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Emma challenged, becoming defensive due to her sheer surprise that _Neal_ was saying these kinds of things to her. She didn’t expect it in the slightest. “Even if my parents forgive Regina, they can’t take back their ruling. The town would riot. As it stands already, she’s stuck under house arrest until she leaves again solely because no one is supposed to know she’s back in town.”

“Then leave _with_ her.”

Emma blinked, taken aback for a moment as she stared at the man across from her. “What?”

“Leave with her,” Neal repeated, like it wasn’t as big of a deal as it was. “People like you and me, Emma, we make our own homes, our own family. We always have. But you have an _actual_ family now. And I know that your parents are here, but Henry’s your kid – _our_ kid – and he should probably come first, you know? And Regina… I might personally not like her, but she’s his mom too. And together, the three of you… I mean, you kind of make a family. So do me a favor and don’t fuck it up, okay? I don’t wanna see you on my side of the fence, because I gotta tell you, it’s got one shitty view.”

Emma was so taken aback by all of this that a myriad of emotions played across her face while she sucked in a sharp breath. “Why are you telling me this right now?” 

Neal shrugged, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned back against the bannister. “I don’t know; maybe I’m just trying to make up for all the crappy things that I did to you back then. And I know this doesn’t come close to making it right, but maybe it’ll be a start. I just don’t want you to live with a regret that big, because it really… _believe_ me, Ems; it really does suck.”

Emma bit the inside of her cheek as she looked at him, unsure on how she was supposed to feel about that. A part of her was distrusting of that kind of selflessness, as his betrayal in the past still stung as though it were yesterday, but that was over ten years ago now, and Emma knew better than most how people could change over the course of time. And so she didn’t immediately reject or accept it, instead choosing to respond with a noncommittal, “I’ll try to remember that,” as it was the most she could promise him right now.

Neal nodded, understanding that was the best he was getting for the moment, and took a step backwards. “I should be getting back. I guess… I’ll see you around, Emma.”

Emma didn’t say anything, but she gave him a nod of acknowledgement in return as she held her arms over her abdomen, and watched him walk away. Despite already having the plan to leave, she had never expected anyone to actually suggest that she do something like that in order to save her relationship; Regina wasn’t exactly well liked by anyone in this town, and something of that magnitude coming from a former lover of hers no less made the suggestion even stranger. The distrustful part of Emma was sure that there had to be some kind of benefit for him, but then there was another part of her that could see how much Neal had changed, and wondered if he really was being genuine; wondered if he really _was_ just telling her that because he cared, and wanted to help her find her happiness. 

After standing on the porch long enough for the light chill of the night air to finally cause a small shiver to run through her body, Emma chewed on the inside of her cheek in thought as she turned and walked back into the manor. As the door clicked behind her, Emma heard the light tap of heels against the stairs and looked up to see Regina descending them into the foyer. “He’s gone?” she inquired, voice a little stiff with her own dislike of the man, and Emma nodded.

“Where’s Henry?”

“Getting ready for bed,” Regina answered as she took the last step, before moving to cross the space between them. “He…” She stopped in front of the other woman, an arm delicately wrapping around her own midsection in just the same way Emma did when she was unsure of her place amongst her surroundings. “Henry, he… seems to have had a wonderful time.” 

Emma gave the brunette a small, tightlipped smile in response as she affirmed, “Neal too.” Chewing lightly on her bottom lip, Emma leaned against the threshold of the door as she questioned, “Regretting it now?”

“Much in the same way I regretted Henry meeting _you,_ ” Regina told her honestly, before quirking a pointed eyebrow in her direction. “But we both know how that turned out, and so I’ve decided to refrain from jumping straight to pessimism. Still, it’s… an adjustment.”

“Mm,” Emma murmured in agreement, knowing exactly how the other woman felt; after all, she had never imagined that she would have to share her son with someone other than Regina, and now it was beginning to look like some kind of visitation schedule would have to be drawn up so that Henry would be able to have _all_ of his parents in his life. That was, at least, if Neal didn’t ultimately decide to fuck off again. But even thinking that didn’t ring true anymore, as that wasn’t the vibe that Emma had gotten off of him on the porch; Neal had seemed genuinely happy to have been able to spend time with Henry, and obviously wanted to do it again. The most Emma could hope for now though, was that that mindset would continue. She didn’t want to see Henry hurt; the poor kid had enough emotional instability in his life already with his two other parents.

Silence passed between the two women for a moment as the blonde trained her eyes on the floor, before she finally allowed her gaze to rise and set on Regina. A thought suddenly coming to her mind, she tentatively asked, “Can I ask you something?”

Regina gave her a small, encouraging smile. “If you’d like.”

“How do you…?” Emma began, before shaking her head for a moment and rephrasing her question into something that had a little more explanation. “Earlier, with Gold and the… the spell. You told me once you were addicted to magic, and watching you… inhale it, take it in, whatever you were doing… that was the first time I actually saw you struggle with the kind of… I don’t know, _pleasure_ that it gave you, you know? I could see that you got off on it, that you craved the feeling of it… whatever. So what I’m—what I’m _asking_ is… how do you do it? How do you immerse yourself in something you have a problem with, and not allow it to take hold of you?”

Regina looked at her for a long moment, her head tilted just slightly to the left as she thought of a way to answer that question in a way that Emma would understand. And yet before answering outright, Regina opted to ask a question of her own in return. “Why are you no longer a thief?” 

“What?” Emma asked, not seeing the connection between the two. “What does that have to do with—?”

“Just answer the question, dear.”

Emma’s eyebrows knitted, but she did as she was instructed, and answered as honestly as she could. “Because… because one day I woke up and realized that that wasn’t what I wanted for myself; wasn’t the kind of life I wanted to _have_ for myself anymore. Once you’re thrown in jail, you kind of evaluate your fucked up situations and try to figure out a way to fix them so you don’t end up in the exact same place again. I had to give up nearly a year of my life, Regina; I had to give up my freedom, my dignity, my… my _kid…_ ” A lump formed in Emma’s throat at the thought, but she pushed it down and shook her head as she averted her eyes. “You know, it just… gets you thinking about everything. So I stopped, and I never looked back; simple as that. But I don’t see how that—”

“And you began stealing when you what were what, four?” Regina interrupted, apparently intent on not answering Emma’s question outright without running her in circles first. It made the blonde wonder if she even knew the answer to it herself.

“That was a _Barbie_ , Regina. I really don’t think that counts.”

“It was the beginning of a habit, so it counts,” Regina told her, before she began listing the things Emma told her off of her fingers. “And then when you were five, you stole from your first convenience store. And yes, I’m aware that it was only candy, but let me continue; I assure you I have a point. At seven,” she continued, touching another one of her fingers, “you began stealing money out of your foster parents’ wallets. And then you were… eleven, was it? Stealing CDs and anything else you could find that was of entertainment value to you. Fifteen then, and you began pickpocketing people on the streets.”

“I know my life story, Regina; hell, I just relived it all for you two hours ago. What’s your point?”

“My _point_ , dear, is that something like that was so deeply ingrained in your life for so long that it became habitual; a way to survive for you. And yet, despite that, you put that part of your life behind you and never gave returning to it a second thought, because you wanted something better for yourself. So now I’m going to ask you one more question.” Taking a step towards her, Regina took Emma’s chin delicately in her hand, gently coaxing for her full attention despite the other woman’s clear impatience with not receiving a straight answer. “What is it that you want in life, Emma?”

“You.”

It was a breathy, automatic answer that had Emma clearing her throat and averting her eyes straight afterwards, because she was certain that wasn’t the point Regina was making. Still, the answer did make Regina smile softly; it was an affirmation that probably wasn’t needed after all they had said to one another over the past couple days, yet it was clearly welcomed all the same. Regardless, Regina gently told her, “No. Think bigger; or perhaps broader.”

Wetting her bottom lip for a moment, Emma’s gaze rested once more on the woman who was now only mere paces in front of her, and answered as honestly as she could. “A family. Stability. Happiness. Love.” Her voice was soft as she spoke, the fingers that were gently resting on her skin distracting as they reminded her of a sense of closeness that they had only recently begun reaching for.

Regina looked momentarily distracted as well as she briefly allowed her thumb to dusk over the lip the blonde’s tongue had previously traced, causing Emma to inhale a sharp breath at the movement. That seemed to snap Regina out of it though as she blinked, cleared her throat, and dropped her hand. “Sorry, yes, that’s…” She took a breath then, straightened her spine, and seemed to force herself back on track. “For all the ways that we are different, Emma, we still seem to share the very basic of desires in life. Happiness, a family, everything else that you mentioned… do you think that if I succumbed to my addiction, if I allowed magic to control me instead of the other way around, that I would have any of that now? If I immersed myself in it and became the Evil Queen again, do you think that path would grant me everything that I wanted out of life?”

Emma pursed her lips and shook her head, as she knew both herself and Henry would no longer be present in Regina’s life if she chose to go down that path again. More than that though, after hearing everything that Regina had gone through in her life, it was obvious that that path had never brought her anything other than pain anyway.

Much like her own addiction.

“That’s why I don’t let it consume me,” Regina finished softly, meeting the other woman’s gaze. “Because in the end, some things have to matter more. You knew that when you decided to stop being a thief, when you decided to turn your life around and become something more than what you were, so why is your alcoholism any different? You’ve already done it once, Emma; so you already know you have it within you to do it again. So just… do it. It truly is as simple as that.”

“But that wasn’t an _addiction_ , Regina, that was just—”

“An addiction is nothing more than a habit with physical repercussions,” Regina reminded her. “At it’s very basic level, they’re both very much the same. And yes, I won’t deny that the physical craving that comes with an addiction makes it harder to walk away from, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be overcome. You’ve done it, I’ve done it, and now it’s your turn to do it again. Every time you feel yourself succumbing to its pull, just remind yourself of what you stand to gain should you ignore it… and what you’ll lose should you decide not to. In the end, I believe you’ll choose what’s truly important to you in your life.”

Emma chewed on the inside of her cheek, mulling over that for a moment. It sounded so _simple,_ which once would have made her scoff in disbelief because addiction was anything but, and yet still, the way Regina presented it… it actually made a lot of sense. It still sounded difficult as hell, as something simple wasn’t necessarily synonymous with easy, but regardless… it gave Emma a different perspective on things, which was something she found she really needed in that moment. 

Looking up at the woman in front of her then, Emma asked her softly, “So that’s just… it? That’s what you do; just think about what’s more important? That’s enough?”

“Yes,” Regina answered, giving her a soft, encouraging smile. “Believe it or not, that really is enough.” Reaching upwards to tuck a stray bit of hair behind Emma’s ear, she continued gently, “You’ll always be tempted, Emma, but it’s what you choose to do with that temptation that matters, not whatever you may have thought or struggled with leading up to that choice.”

“But do you still… feel weakened by it?” Emma asked, needing to know. It was something she constantly struggled with, the weakness and shame and helplessness that came with it. “The cravings, the urge to just… give in to it? To pretend, even for just a second, that it’d be easier than fighting it?”

Regina’s smile turned sympathetic then, understanding as she continued to gently brush nonexistent strands of hair out of Emma’s eyes. “Every single day.”

On one hand, it was the answer Emma had been hoping for, as it made her feel less alone, and much less weaker than she originally viewed herself. But on the other, it was almost devastating to realize that no matter how much time went by, it wouldn’t get any easier. It would be a battle she would constantly be fighting for the rest of her life, and it made her wonder how long not only she could go, but _Regina_ could go, until it ultimately tired them out.

Still, even if the ending still seemed foreboding, there was still a part of Emma that was immensely appreciative of Regina in that moment, because she had needed someone who really understood what she was going through. Before, the word addiction when it came to Regina and her magic seemed like nothing more than story, something in the past that didn’t much affect her now. But after seeing her in Gold’s shop, and after having this talk with her, Emma realized that maybe they were more alike in that regard than she had originally thought. And it… comforted her, to know that; to know that she wasn’t alone.

So Emma’s fingers gently wrapped around the hand that was still absentmindedly fiddling with strands of her hair, pulling it down to her side and holding it before she leaned in, pressing a soft kiss against the other woman’s lips. Emma worried that she might pull away, as despite their shared feelings that they wanted to work towards something better, they had only just begun, but Regina’s eyes fluttered closed instead, and Emma stayed there a little longer than what would be considered chaste before she ever so slightly pulled away. 

“Thank you,” she breathed, her gaze finding Regina’s once the other woman had opened her eyes. Her hand tightened in the brunette’s, feeling the woman’s uneven breath against her lips as she admitted, “I didn’t— I mean, I never realized you actually… understood. And I know that’s… I know it’s _stupid,_ because you had told me before that you had a problem with it, but still it didn’t really click because—”

“You’ve never really seen me struggle with it,” Regina finished for her softly, understanding what Emma meant. “But when I first came to this world, it was incredibly difficult for me to get by without magic. I had thought I would be able to handle it, as I lived many years of my life without it before, but as it turned out, it was very difficult for me to let go of that kind of power once I had had a taste of it. I didn’t know that it would… that it would consume my thoughts, even make my hands shake from my inability to reach for something that once coursed through my veins like fire. It was an incredible high for me, a drug that I hadn’t realized I was dependent on until I was suddenly without it. And it… it broke me, for a while, after it was gone. But I got through it, Emma, and you will too. It’ll just…” Giving her a soft smile, Regina cupped her cheek and finished, “it will take some time, so don’t get discouraged. You’re much stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

An indescribable emotion rose up in Emma then, so suddenly that she even took herself aback when her heart clenched in her chest and her eyes misted over. Regina’s brow furrowed at the reaction her words garnered, and her hand squeezed the one that was laced in her own as she inquired softly, “Emma?”

“Sorry, I—” Emma began, her voice suddenly tight as a tear fell down the contour of her cheek. Regina wiped it away before the blonde had a chance to do it herself, and Emma sniffled in between a short laugh to try to downplay her own emotions. “Sorry,” she repeated again, shaking her head. “It’s just… the other day when I came home and I was…” _Hung over._ “The way you looked at me, it was like you… like you had given up on me almost? And—” A small sob made her voice crack as more tears spilled their way down her cheeks, and as she wiped them away she admitted, “And now you’re just… standing in front of me, telling me I can get through it and it’s just… it’s a little…”

It was overwhelming; completely and utterly, and Emma wasn’t quite sure how to handle it in that moment.

But Regina’s face masked in regret, and she began, “Emma, I’m… I’m sorry, for how I reacted when you came home that day. I was just… disappointed in you, scared that one mistake might lead to more and—and I reacted poorly. I should have been more supportive.”

“No,” Emma responded, shaking her head as she wiped another tear from her cheek. “No, you had every right to be pissed at me, Regina. I fucked up, and—”

“Regardless, I should have handled it better, and I’m sorry,” Regina apologized, cleaning off the last of Emma’s tears with her thumbs before smoothing the hair back from the other woman’s face. “I know things between us have been… difficult, to say the least, but ever since we’ve really begun to talk about everything, I’ve come to realize that perhaps we aren’t as doomed as we once thought. You listened to my past with an open mind tonight; despite it being difficult for you to swallow, you didn’t judge me, or condemn me, and I think it’s only fair that I don’t condemn you for your mistakes either, no matter how hard they may be for _me_ to swallow in kind.”

Emma nodded, understanding that. Because in the end, that was the root of their problem wasn’t it? They condemned one another before trying to listen and understand _why_ the mistakes were made, instead only choosing to focus on the fact that they had been made at all, and all it led to was separation and heartache. Emma more so than Regina in that regard, but still; in the end, they both bore some degree of fault, and Emma was tired of it. She was tired of being unhappy; it was time for things to change. 

And so without much thought, Emma did what felt natural to her and eradicated the space between them, fingers sliding through thick, dark hair as she brought Regina’s lips to her own. They shouldn’t have been doing this and they both knew it; they had always been slaves to temptation and they still had more to work through before they could finally find some sense of stability in their relationship, but the small sense of hesitancy in Regina was quickly overshadowed by something deeper, and suddenly Emma’s back was pressed up against the threshold of the doorway and they were kissing in a way that had always said more than words could anyhow.

It was an understanding, a thank you, a promise that things would get better; proof that they _were_ getting better, that maybe for once in their relationship they had made the right decision. Talking had always frightened Emma; _knowing_ about Regina’s past and Regina knowing about her own and all the ugly stains they both had splattered all over it, it made everything sound like an excuse. Regina had her excuses for murder; Emma had her excuses for being an alcoholic, or at least the susceptibility to becoming such later in her life. But they could have both walked another path in life, could have chosen to be better than what they became, and yet they hadn’t. They were both damaged in that way, but maybe they needed that kind of imperfection in one another so that they could strive to be something different, to become something _better_ without feeling inadequate in each other’s shadows. 

And they were; they were trying, and maybe it wouldn’t be perfect, but maybe they could help one another pick up the shattered pieces of each other’s lives, instead of damaging each other further so that they wouldn’t be alone in their misery. They both had so much misery in their lives already; wasn’t it time for them to find a sense of happiness within one other? _True_ happiness, not fabricated this time with lies or curses and the both of them wrapped up in the very definition of ‘ignorance is bliss.’ Acceptance of each other’s flaws would take time, and Emma wasn’t stupid enough to believe that just because she wanted things to get better that they would overnight, but that didn’t stop her from hoping that this really was the beginning of something real, something healing and honest, and not just a brief pit stop along the road of the last few month’s sickening toxicity. 

But just as soon as it began it ended, footsteps coming down the stairs and a loud, “Eww,” being accompanied by the interruption as Henry bore witness to an intimate moment between his two mothers. “Can’t you do that in your room?” 

But even as he said it, even as he tried to look properly scandalized by his parents’ impromptu make out session, Emma could see the happiness in his eyes as she separated herself from Regina. It wasn’t a secret that he wanted his mothers to get back together and for all of them to be a family again, but Henry still had the normal kid ‘image’ to uphold of being grossed out by parental affection, and so he was trying – albeit pretty damn unsuccessfully – to hide the smile that was threatening to cross his face. 

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for bed?” Regina asked him instead, an eyebrow arching at the kid’s jeans and a t-shirt that he had yet to change out of. “It’s ten-thirty.”

“I know, but something’s wrong with the PlayStation; it says it’s not connecting to the—”

Emma coughed loudly and shot Henry a look of warning, but it was too late.

“What are you doing on your PlayStation at _this_ hour?” Regina demanded, and Henry scrunched up his face as he realized maybe he should have just addressed his connectivity issues with Emma, and not his other mother. “You have school in the morning; you’re lucky we allowed you to stay up this late as it is! Now get upstairs and get ready for bed before I decide to just take that stupid thing out of your room; it’s doing nothing but melting your brain anyway. I don’t know why I let your birthmother talk me into letting you keep it up there.”

“But _Mom…!_ ”

“Kid, best quit while you’re ahead,” Emma warned, but Henry just scowled and muttered under his breath, “Don’t feel ahead.”

“Until she actually _takes_ it out of your room, you’re ahead,” Emma reminded him, before giving him an encouraging head nod. “Now come on, go get dressed for bed and I promise I’ll take a look at it in the morning.”

“Fine,” Henry mumbled dejectedly, before deciding he could at least give them shit before he left and added, “Even though I know you’re only trying to get rid of me right now so you can keep kissing my _mom_.” He smirked then before turning around and taking the stairs two at a time, the sound of his sneakers against the wood echoing through the foyer. Emma watched him go from the bottom of the stairwell until she was sure the kid was back in his room, before turning on her heel and shooting Regina a small smirk of her own.

“Well, he’s not wrong.”

Regina rolled her eyes. “Kissing or no, it is still his bedtime,” she reminded her, as if she didn’t _know._ “And I expect you to have a talk with him about that thing; because if it interrupts either his sleep or his studies, I _will_ take it from him. I will not have our son live out his adult years in our basement because he was more concerned about his fantasy life than his real one.”

“Tell him not to be a complete loser; got it,” Emma responded, like she was reciting it off a list, and Regina shot her an exasperated look that was only met with an amused chuckle as she took Regina’s hand in hers and guided their bodies back together. “Relax. I’ll meet all your parental expectations and standards, I promise.”

“Then you should probably be forewarned that I find making out with my lover in the commonplaces of our home when our _son_ is upstairs to be in terrible taste.”

“You didn’t seem to be complaining two minutes ago,” Emma responded with a smirk, her voice low as her lips dusked the underside of Regina’s jaw. “Or the two hundred other times we’ve done it over the past nine months…”

“Emma,” Regina interrupted flatly, and suddenly the blonde realized that she was being completely serious and pulled away from her immediately, her brow crinkling as she watched a strained emotion pass along the other woman’s face. “He shouldn’t have… things are still so—they’re _fragile,_ and I worry that he’s going to expect something that might not come to pass. Just because we’re trying to repair our relationship now, doesn’t mean that something else won’t go wrong, and I don’t want to see him hurt again. It devastated him the last time we separated.”

Emma frowned, but she knew Regina was right. It was just easy to get caught up in it, the sense of normalcy; the kissing and the domesticity and the parenting of their shared son. It was just… easy, to pretend that just for a second that they were a normal couple again. But they weren’t a couple at all, at least not officially, not until Emma put some real effort into her sobriety and Regina made an effort to rebuild the trust that she had once again managed to shatter. Still, it felt like it; for one short moment it really felt like it, and Emma didn’t want to let it go.

But she had to, because Regina was right. They had Henry to think about, and they needed more stability in their relationship before they could give their son any hope of a happily ever after. And so Emma nodded in understanding and dropped Regina’s hand, muttering as her gaze met the ground, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—I probably shouldn’t have kissed you. You’re right.”

“I’m not sorry that you kissed me,” Regina told her softly, and Emma raised her head to meet the honesty in the other woman’s gaze. She was twisting her hands, a nervous habit that she had, and it suddenly struck Emma how scared Regina was that despite their best efforts, this wasn’t going to go well. “I’m just sorry that Henry saw it. We need to be more careful, especially if we plan to pursue the regrowth of our relationship in… well, in _that_ way.”

“We’re not _supposed_ to pursue it in ‘that way’, Regina,” Emma reminded her, referencing Archie’s earlier suggestion. And while it made sense, she still hated it; but in the end, Regina still didn’t want to make love to her until they were in a better place, and the last thing Emma wanted was another violent encounter, and so she begrudgingly accepted it as something that needed to happen right then. “We’re on sex probation, remember?”

“Not that it doesn’t surprise me that you didn’t pay attention in health class, dear, but I assure you, there is a distinct difference between _kissing_ and _sex._ I merely meant reconnecting with the former of the two.”

Emma snorted in disbelief. “Yeah, good luck with that. We’re like a walking billboard for impulse control issues, Regina; kissing _always_ leads to sex with us. We’ve never known anything else.”

“Well maybe it’s time we learned,” Regina responded, her voice strong and assured despite her incessant fiddling with her own fingers. It garnered Emma’s full attention though, and the brunette continued, “Emma, we… I think we should explore other areas of intimacy. There needs to be more to this relationship than violent, mindless orgasms—”

“Regina, you know that I…” Emma tried, before she suddenly felt a little self-conscious about being in a place that Regina clearly wasn’t, causing her voice to grow softer as she finished with, “You know that’s not what I want from you. Not anymore.”

Regina pursed her lips, a sympathetic look in her eyes because yes, she knew. “I don’t mean in regards to just sex,” she explained softly. “I’d like to… finally get to a place where we _can_ kiss just to kiss, where we can relax with one another on the couch, hold each other’s hands and just talk about things. We don’t do that; for so long now, the only things we have been able to do is fight or fuck. That’s not what I want out of a relationship; it shouldn’t even be the basis of one to begin with.”

“No, I know, I don’t want—” Emma tried, needing Regina to understand that she really was on the same page as her. “I mean I _want_ all those other things; the hand holding and the kissing and stuff, but not the… you know. Whatever. Am I even making sense right now or am I just babbling?”

Regina smirked. “A little of both, dear. Luckily for you, I’ve gotten used to it.”

Emma pursed her lips as she leaned her shoulder against the threshold of the door, her head meeting the wood as well as she peered at her for a moment. “So you… want to practice other areas of intimacy then?”

“That is what I just said, yes.”

“…Like as in right now?”

Regina quirked an amused eyebrow, and Emma shot her the most innocent look she could muster. “I think it’s past your bedtime too, isn’t it, dear?” Regina reminded her, instead of the magical ‘yes’ that Emma was looking for. “You have therapy early in the morning.”

Emma scrunched up her nose in grumpy protest, but didn’t dispute it. Although she would gladly sacrifice sleep, if Regina didn’t want to pursue something like that with her tonight, then she didn’t want to push it; because she was right, everything was still fragile between them, and if they didn’t take it slow then they could end up fucking everything up all over again. Emma didn’t want that. 

“There is, however, something that I… would like to try, if you’re willing to and able to control yourself.”

_That_ got Emma’s attention, and she lifted her head immediately and asked, “What?” She wanted to say ‘anything’, but realized at the last second that it would probably sound too needy and she really didn’t want to come off that way, despite the fact that that ship was probably far past sailed by now.

“I’ve…” Regina began, although she looked like she was having an internal struggle with herself before she reluctantly admitted, “ _missed_ sleeping with you, despite the fact that you hog the covers and snore terribly if you fall asleep on your back. I know it sounds completely asinine, given that we’ve only just started to mend things between us, but if you’re not overly attached to the guest room, perhaps we could try—”

“Yes!”

So much for not sounding needy.

But Regina’s lips curled up into a small smile, obviously happy that she and Emma were on the same page about that. “Mind you, there will have to be ground rules.”

“As in no sex.” 

Obviously.

“As in you need to be out of the bed before Henry wakes up, because I don’t want your presence in there to confuse him and make him think… well, that this is anything other than a trial arrangement.” Emma nodded in agreement, understanding the importance of that, and Regina continued, “We also need to be careful to keep our hands away from each other’s erogenous zones, and I think that for now, we shouldn’t kiss while we’re in bed; because I do think that in those circumstances, it would be much harder to stop ourselves from doing… what we usually do in bed.”

“Don’t kiss or grope you,” Emma repeated, trying to keep the intense wave of happiness that this brought her internal. “Got it.” Because she had missed it too; she missed Regina’s cold feet tangling with hers and her grumpy face in the morning and… everything. Even when things were shit between them, they still slept in the same bed while they were outside of Storybrooke; it was the one bit of normalcy that they had, and Emma desperately wanted it back.

“Good,” Regina responded as she gave the other woman a soft smile, clearly pleased that her terms seemed acceptable to her soon-to-be bedmate. “I know it… might have been wiser to wait a little longer before we attempt something like this, but as I said, I’ve—”

“I know,” Emma interrupted softly, returning the small smile in kind. “I’ve missed it too, Regina.” Tangling her fingers in the other woman’s hand, she assured her, “Don’t worry, we won’t… we’re not going to fuck it up. Okay? I don’t want to fuck it up; not for anything. Not anymore.”

Regina’s smile met her eyes then, and she affirmed, “Nor do I.”

Emma bit her lower lip as her own smile began to grow, suddenly finding herself in awe of how things had changed between them in just the span of a few days. Even though a part of Emma wanted to believe that things might not have gotten this bad between them should they only have gone to therapy earlier, another part of her knew that even if they had, it was doubtful that either of them would have been receptive to it. Maybe they needed to break completely in order to finally rebuild, and although Emma wished it would have been easier than it was, she still wouldn’t trade it – this place that they were now – for anything.

Because they were finally _trying_ , and for the first time in months, Emma could actually see that there might be happiness down the road for the both of them after all.

**TBC…**


	31. Resolution

**CHAPTER THIRTY ONE  
Resolution**

A few days passed, and Regina found herself actually daring to hope that things would continue to get better. They were sleeping in the same room again, and Emma was back to hogging the covers at night and Regina was back to torturing her with her ice cold feet because she secretly always liked the way it made the blonde jump, but it was perfect because it was _normal;_ it was a normalcy that had been lost behind anger and sorrow and blame and yet now they would lie in bed, Regina’s head resting against Emma’s abdomen as they talked about anything and everything before they finally drifted off to sleep.

Sometimes it was even about nothing at all; just light banter and soft laughter, but then there was last night, and last night was _heavy_ with the question, “What are you most ashamed of?” and Emma told her about being homeless and sleeping with strangers a couple times when she was fifteen just to get a roof over her head and food in her mouth, and Regina could see the self-loathing and despair etched across her features as Emma finished quietly with her shame-filled admittance of, “I was basically a whore, Regina.” 

Those words filled Regina with a despair of her own, and thus she was quick to assure her that, “No, _no,_ Emma. You were a survivor; you were just a child, and you did what you had to to get by. There’s no shame in that,” but even as the words left her mouth, she could tell that Emma didn’t believe a word of them. The blonde had turned on her side then, refusing to look at her even as she repeated the same question back to bedmate, still wanting, despite her own insecurities in that moment, to know that she wasn’t the only one who was ashamed of her past. 

Regina had a list. She had dozens upon dozens of things that she was ashamed of, but the worst one was something only Emma would ever understand, and so she had finally admitted, “I’m ashamed that I turned into exactly who my mother wanted me to be.” And Emma got it, without any more explanation than that, and she turned then to take Regina’s hand in her own before informing her that that probably wasn’t true, because she was pretty sure that someone like Cora didn’t want her precious investment to turn out to be a huge dyke. It had lightened the mood, and Regina cracked a smirk at that, which turned quickly into a full out laugh, and she had felt a little better. 

Because _no,_ her mother definitely would not have approved of that.

Still, it didn’t _make_ it better, but that was okay. Their past was their past, and there was nothing either of them could do to change that. It was enough to just talk about it, to finally share with one another the parts of themselves that they hid from the rest of the world, and for the first time in a long while, Regina began to view what she had with Emma as an actual relationship, and not the codependent mess that they had previously become. She felt like she knew her better now than she ever did even when they were blissfully ignorant and happy all those months ago, and it finally began to place them on even footing. 

And the more Emma talked about things, the more Regina began to understand why she fell so easily into alcoholism. Not only did she grow up in unstable environments and lived briefly with a foster parent that had a problem with it, but when she was a homeless teen she would drink fairly heavily whenever she found herself having access to it. It had become a coping mechanism for her shitty life back then, for dealing with circumstances beyond her control, and although her stint in jail and the better life she had lead after that made her able to have a relatively normal relationship with it, it was no wonder that when everything fell apart again, she turned to the one thing she knew she could use to cope. Emma equated a lack of control over her own life with being drunk, and so Regina vowed to help her never feel that way again, with the hope that it would allow Emma to have an easier time with her recovery. 

Of course she knew it wouldn’t be that easy, and that it was impossible for her to control everything, but that didn’t mean that Regina wasn’t going to try regardless. She loved Emma, despite the hardships and despite the hell that they had been through, she loved her, and the more that they talked, the more that she saw Emma working hard on her sobriety, Regina was finally able to see the woman’s defenses begin to crumble around her, revealing a small sliver of the woman she fell in love with underneath. And she wanted that, she wanted more of that; she wanted to tear down the rest of Emma’s walls and just fall into the woman she was really meant to be with, but Regina knew she couldn’t force it. And so she watched and she waited, and hoped that one day the rest of Emma’s walls would fall of their own accord.

During the woman’s first addiction counseling session, Archie had suggested that Emma try to pick up a hobby; a way to distract herself when she felt the urge to drink, and after a rather frustrating conversation (“What the hell am I supposed to do, Regina? _Knit?_ This is stupid, the only damn thing I’m even good at is shooting a gun.”), Regina had suggested that she try archery. It encompassed the skill of aim that Emma seemed to already be good at with a gun, and had enough of a ‘violent’ aspect that it could release frustration should she need to. Snow, of course, immediately jumped on this idea and offered to teach Emma, but as it turned out, shooting an arrow is quite different than firing a gun, and after a few days of practice, Emma had yet to even hit the _board_ , let alone the bulls eye. 

At least her form was beginning to get better, but at the moment that was really all she had going for her.

As if on cue, Regina’s cell phone rang, Emma’s name flashing on her screen. Regina’s brow crinkled as she turned away from her laptop and picked it up; as far as she knew, Emma was out at another archery lesson with Snow, and so she couldn’t imagine why she would be needed right then. After pressing the talk button, Regina placed the phone against her ear and answered, “Hello?”

“Oh my god, Regina, I’m such an _asshole._ ”

“What?” Regina asked, confusion and mild panic flickering over her expression as she sat up a little straighter in her desk chair. “What’s happened, where are you?” A part of her immediately began to fear that Emma had relapsed again; her paranoia apparently ignoring the part where Emma sounded completely competent. The wounds were still fresh from the woman’s last relapse though, so despite it being completely _wrong_ , it wasn’t an entirely unwarranted assumption either.

“At the archery range still, but I… I kind of need you to pick me up,” Emma answered, her tone tinged with guilt. “My—Mary Margaret, she uh… sort of left without me.”

Regina exhaled a small sigh of relief, glad that Emma wasn’t camped out drunk in some bar somewhere; she honestly didn’t believe she could emotionally handle another setback right now. But Emma’s words still left more questions than answers, and so Regina’s eyebrows rose as she asked, “Care to enlighten me as to why your mother would leave you behind?”

“Um… I may have told her that Henry and I were planning to leave Storybrooke with you after his party.”

Regina exhaled an exasperated breath. “ _Emma,_ ” she chided, knowing immediately that this wasn’t a planned out and delicately executed conversation, as it should have been. Knowing Emma it probably just slipped out, most likely due to frustration or some other emotion that failed to connect the woman’s brain to her mouth, and Regina sighed heavily as she leaned back in her chair and tangled her fingers in her hair. This was bound to cause more drama, and that was the last thing that they needed right now.

“I’m sorry!” Emma exclaimed on the other end of the line. “But I was frustrated that I still couldn’t hit that _stupid_ board, and she was just going on and on about how she hoped Archie would be able to help me work through our separation when the time came for you to leave again, because _apparently_ alcoholism has a genetic factor and I guess my dad just admitted to her that my grandfather was one? Which, great, like I needed even more odds stacked against me; but now _David_ feels all guilty like it’s his fault and… I’m getting off track. Anyway, point was that because I’m genetically prone to being an absolute fuck up or something, she was all worried that I was going to be so upset over you leaving that I was going to relapse again, and I just—I don’t know, it just _came out._ Like I thought that that being a nonfactor would make her feel better? I don’t know. It was stupid and I wasn’t thinking, and now I made her cry because I’m a huge dick.”

Regina sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Sometimes I honestly debate on buying you a muzzle. Is it really so difficult for you to think before you speak?”

“Look, I said it was stupid, didn’t I?” Emma responded, sounding frustrated with herself, with Regina, with the entire situation. “So can you please just come get me? I’ll figure out how to fix this later.”

“Well, I would love to, dear, but since you seem to have forgotten, I’m under house arrest and am not supposed to be leaving the premises.”

“So? Just poof here and then poof me back; no one will know.”

“Emma, I can’t ‘poof’ anywhere without _you_ ,” Regina reminded her, shaking her head. Honestly, it seemed like the woman really wasn’t thinking _anything_ through today. “And even if I wasn’t under house arrest, the likelihood of me getting into that deathtrap you bought yesterday is very minimal.”

“Oh my god, it’s not _that_ bad—”

“It is, and you will be exchanging it for a new vehicle in the morning. I don’t care if it’s only a temporary purchase, our son is _not_ getting into that rusty piece of junk you believe passes for a suitable transportation method. So I suggest next time you come back with something I approve of, otherwise I will continue to send you out every single day until you come back with something suitable; is that understood?”

Regina could hear Emma exhale a frustrated breath of air, but relented with, “Fine, whatever. I’ll see what else Billy has tomorrow, but for now could you just—?”

“Risk not only my life but my allowance to stay here through my son’s birthday? No,” Regina answered, much to Emma’s displeasure. And while Regina wasn’t overly fond of adhering to Snow White’s wishes, after today, the woman was now no doubt furious with her for ‘taking away’ her only daughter. The last thing Regina needed right then was any more reasons for Snow to prematurely throw her over the town line. Besides, this was Emma’s mistake, and she needed to learn how to rectify them herself; Regina couldn’t always be there to hold her hand through things. “Besides, you and I both know your mother wouldn’t leave you stranded – at least not after that little tree mishap – and so she either just stormed off for dramatic effect and is waiting nearby for you to call her, or she’s enlisted your father to come get you in her place. So figure out which one that it is, and be sure to be back in time for dinner; Henry has requested that I make beef barley stew and I don’t want you to be the cause of it going cold.”

“ _Regina—_ ”

“Learn to stand on your own two feet, Emma,” Regina said in parting as she rose from her desk chair. “I’ll see you soon.” 

She hung up then, knowing that Emma would surely be frustrated with her for it, but the woman simply couldn’t rely on Regina to bail her out of every mishap she managed to get herself into. That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t support or help Emma when she needed it, but this was something the blonde could manage to figure out without her help, and she needed Emma to become a little more self-sufficient. 

She used to be; Emma used to easily be one of the most self-sufficient people that Regina had ever known, but her alcoholism had broken her – caused her to feel inadequate at almost every turn in her life – and now Regina needed to help her realize that she was much more capable than she gave herself credit for. Besides, she already had one child she needed to take care of; she didn’t need another. Especially when Emma had already demonstrated once that she was perfectly capable of being an independent adult; all she needed now, Regina hoped, was the self-confidence to be so again.

Not forty five minutes later, Emma was walking through the door to the home that they shared, lines of irritation mapping her face at what was no doubt Regina’s refusal to help her when she had asked. “Ruby gave me a ride,” she told her flatly as a way of greeting, responding to Regina’s expectant brow raise once she had exited the kitchen.

“What a mature way to run away from your problems, dear.”

“I’m not trying to run away from anything, Regina; I’m just trying to give myself a second to get my shit together so I don’t end up hurting my parents _more,_ alright?” Emma responded, running a frustrated hand through her hair before shrugging off her leather jacket. As she hung it up on the hook, she continued, “I know you think I’m completely useless, but I really am trying to do the _mature_ thing here by not throwing myself directly in the middle of a situation I’m not prepared for. I spout off sometimes, okay? I know that. And I don’t want to say anything else I’m going to regret, so just… give me a second to get my head on straight and figure this out, alright? I’ll deal with it; I just… I just need some time.”

Regina pursed her lips, but didn’t contradict Emma’s chosen plan of action. Perhaps it would be better if Emma allowed herself some time to figure out what she was going to say, as spontaneity and Emma Swan tended to lead to rather bad outcomes; at least as of late. Still, Regina was wary that she was only using this as an excuse to ignore the problem; pretending difficult things didn’t exist was her forte, after all. 

Emma sighed heavily though and slumped against the wall, exhaling a groan of frustration as she banged the back of her head against the plaster. “Fuck. Why did I have to open my mouth?” She covered her face with her hands then as she exhaled another groan, and Regina shot her a sympathetic look; Emma really did seem to be torn up about causing her parents more emotional pain.

“You had to tell them some time, dear,” Regina gently reminded her. “Perhaps this wasn’t the ideal way, but it’s better than springing this on them right as we’re about to leave, which I had the feeling was what you were planning to do before.”

“I wasn’t going to—!” Emma started to explain, but cut herself off midway and sighed as she stood up straighter and rubbed the back of her neck. “Fuck, maybe I was. I don’t know—I didn’t really think a lot about it, I just kept putting it off. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to tell my parents that I’ll probably never see them again? Parents that _already_ weren’t able to see me for twenty eight years? How the hell do I _justify_ that?”

“You’re doing what’s best for your son, Emma,” Regina told her, because Emma coming with them had been decided long before they started becoming sexually or romantically involved again. Back then, it _was_ just for their son. Whether that had changed for her since, Regina wasn’t entirely sure; but she hoped that with the progress that they had been making lately, that Emma now factored her in as well under her lists of reasons to leave. “It may not be the most ideal situation, but Henry needs to come first.”

“I know,” Emma assured her, the words coming out in one long breath as it fell between another sigh. “I know. But it still makes me feel like such an _asshole._ Before, I was just so pissed at them that I didn’t—I didn’t really _think_ about how they were going to feel, you know? Or maybe I did and I just didn’t care. I don’t know. But after seeing the _look_ on her face, I just…” She trailed off, shaking her head as she averted her gaze. “It made me think about how I would feel if you had chosen to just take Henry with you when you left town the first time; about how I spent so long not knowing him, not having him in my life, and then to finally have him back for barely a second before having to give him up again, to never _see_ him again, that’s just… that’s so fucked up. What I’m going to do to them, it’s so fucked up…”

Regina’s lips turned down into a sympathetic frown, unsure how to make the woman feel better about her decision to leave; logically yes, in the end, they had to do what was best for Henry, and him having both of his mothers in his life was exactly that, but that still left him with never with never seeing his grandparents again, and that wasn’t entirely fair either. Still, it wasn’t as though they had any other options at this point. “Emma…” she tried, but before she could say any more, Emma’s phone jingled, indicating the arrival of a new text message, and the woman puffed out a frustrated breath of air before digging her phone out of her back pocket and glancing at it.

“Gold again,” she told her, annoyance crossing over her expression before she pointedly ignored the text and shoved the phone back into her pocket. “You know he’s gonna end up showing up here if we don’t give him back that stupid wand; you need to stop putting this off.”

Regina pursed her lips. It had been days of her making excuses; they needed to find a house, they had to plan Henry’s party, Emma didn’t need any distractions from her recovery. Frankly, a part of her just didn’t want to know, because if it was her who was cursed and yet they couldn’t figure out the culprit, she would have to live the rest of her life _knowing_ that she would never truly find happiness. Perhaps she was taking a leaf out of Emma’s book in regards to preferring ignorance, but right then it just seemed easier. She had so many other things looming over her head; the last thing she needed was another. 

“I think I found a house for us,” Regina said instead, and Emma’s eyes narrowed.

“Regina, don’t change the sub—wait, really?” she questioned midway, apparently unable to stop her curiosity. Regina murmured an affirmative.

“It’s a three bedroom with a loft apartment on the top floor. If you prefer to have more space I can continue looking, as I’m sure there are houses with decent apartment buildings nearby, but I thought this way it might be easier with shuffling Henry between us, at least until we reach a point in our relationship where we could… possibly live together again.” It was said tentatively, unsure even now what their relationship would ultimately amount to, but Regina chose to be optimistic regardless. “The town is only about an hour away and has a highly rated public school system, which of course isn’t my first choice but seeing as money is a little tight at the moment, we may have to give Henry a public education for a little while; at least until he attends high school.”

“Yeah, that sounds—it sounds good. I’ll check out the floor plans and stuff online a little later; although since you’re a hell of a lot pickier than I am, I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine,” Emma answered with a small smile. She quickly got back on track however, shooting Regina a pointed look as she continued, “But seriously, Regina, we do really need to do that—”

She was interrupted by a loud knocking however, and Emma released an exasperated breath of air before heading towards the door, “I swear to God, if that’s Gold…” But right after she opened it, her eyebrows rose in surprise and exclaimed, “—Mom?”

Although Regina had never heard Emma call Snow that to her face, it obviously wasn’t the first time as the woman didn’t immediately dissolve into an incoherent, babbling mess of tears. Even still, Snow’s face did awash with emotion at the term of address, as no doubt it was still fairly new to her. She kept ahold of herself though, and her brow furrowed in confusion momentarily as she addressed, “Emma. I… I thought your father had picked you up. What are you doing here?”

Regina shot her a look that clearly said, “I told you so,” as she was certain the two idiots wouldn’t leave their daughter stranded, but Emma echoed the confused look on her mother’s face and responded, “Well it’s not like either of you called me to tell me that, so I had Ruby give me a ride. Besides, even if he had picked me up, why wouldn’t I be—?”

“I wanted to have a conversation with Regina,” Snow admitted, her gaze flickering to said woman before landing on her daughter once more. Her eyes were still reddened, apparently having only stopped crying fairly recently. “I asked your father to bring you to our apartment, as I… would have preferred that Regina and I to speak alone; at least for the time being.”

“Why, so you could _threaten_ her?” Emma asked, immediately on the defensive as she stepped in front of her mother’s line of sight, successfully blocking Regina from view as her hand gripped tightly to the side of the door. 

“No, of course not!” Snow was quick to deny, almost sounding surprised that Emma would even think that; as if threatening and coercing Regina out of her daughter’s life hadn’t been her sole intention every day for the past few months. Change of heart or not, it still made Regina snort in amusement.

“Well, what do you know, the princess found some sense after all. Let her in, Emma; I have to admit I’m curious to see how she plans to go about getting what she wants without resorting to anything that will cause you to hate her.”

“ _Queen,_ ” Snow corrected, a challenging look in her eye at Regina’s refusal to acknowledge her proper title. Regina just shot her a disbelieving, yet amused look at the insistence, as she had yet to see Snow act like the queen she was born to be; if anything, she was just playing at the role. 

Emma shot her a wary look. “I don’t know; I mean, I really don’t think that—”

Regina placed her hand on the small of the other woman’s back, gently guiding her away from the door. “There’s a recipe on the kitchen counter; I was in the middle of it before you came home, so if you would be a dear and finish that for me while I speak with your mother, I’d appreciate it. It shouldn’t be too difficult for you; it mostly involves chopping vegetables and throwing them in the crock pot. Just be sure to turn it _on_ when you are finished.”

Emma narrowed her eyes at her. “I’m not an idiot, Regina.”

“You somehow manage to burn pop tarts, dear; I find it saves my sanity if I try not to expect too much from you in the kitchen.”

Emma shot her a sarcastic look at that before allowing her gaze to rest on both her mother and Regina in turn, her expression turning wary once more. But eventually she relented with a reluctant sounding, “—Fine.” Before turning to leave however, she continued, “But this isn’t just about you guys and your never-ending feud, alright? This is my life, my decision, and so I’ll give you twenty minutes to say whatever you need to say to each other, but after that I’m becoming a part of this conversation. I’m not about to have either of you decide my life for me, because in case both of you haven’t noticed, I’m an adult.” Emma scrunched up her nose then though, amending with, “You know, despite my huge failure of actually acting like one lately. But I’m getting better.”

“You are, dear,” Regina assured her with a small smile, which was reflected by the blonde across from her. Emma looked at her for a moment longer then, before leaning in and placing a gentle kiss on the brunette’s cheek in parting. Regina could see Snow instinctively stiffen out of her peripheral, but for once she didn’t say anything.

“Seriously though, please don’t kill each other.”

“Your mother and I are more than capable of having an adult conversation, I assure you,” Regina responded, before giving Emma a tiny push towards the kitchen. “Now go finish dinner; I’d like to have it on the table by seven and it takes five hours to cook.”

Emma pursed her lips, obviously not happy with being left out of this conversation for the time being, but allowing the two women to say their piece to one another regardless as she finally turned and headed into the kitchen. Regina looked at Snow then, and motioned towards the study in an overly polite gesture. “Shall we?”

Regina closed the door behind them once they had entered the room, giving them the privacy Snow seemed to want in that moment as she watched the other woman wring her hands together. Regina had to admit that she was curious why Snow was coming to her instead of her own daughter, and so she raised her brow expectantly once the other woman met her gaze, waiting for her to speak.

And when she finally did, she said the last thing Regina would have ever expected. “Regina, I… I need your help.” It seemed almost physically difficult for the woman, to even get out the words, and yet out they came with such blaring clarity that they almost knocked Regina back from the sheer shock of it.

“…Excuse me?”

Snow shook her head, obviously finding this entire situation as bizarre as Regina, but she pushed forward regardless. “Believe me, that wasn’t what I wanted to say to you. I wish I could just stand here and tell you that you are not taking my daughter from me again, but you and I both know that a demand like that wouldn’t be taken well; not from you, and certainly not from Emma, and I am _through_ making mistakes when it comes to my daughter.”

“If you’re asking me to convince your daughter to stay behind, then you’ve come to the wrong place,” Regina warned her, unsure what Snow’s endgame plan was, but certain that something like that wouldn’t be an option. “Neither myself nor Emma plan to be separated from our son; that is why we came up with this arrangement in the first place.”

“And I don’t plan to be separated from my _daughter,_ ” Snow responded, her tone growing hard enough to accent a very serious point. “As a mother yourself, certainly you must understand that, Regina!”

“Well what would you like me to do, dear?” Regina asked, her tone growing a little tense herself as she arched a brow. “In case you’ve forgotten, this had to come about due to _your_ ruling. If you’re so concerned about your daughter leaving, then _retract_ it.”

“If I thought it would be that simple, don’t you think I would?” Snow countered, shooting her a frustrated look. “But what do you think the townsfolk will do, should I reinstate you as a citizen of Storybrooke? They’ll be out for blood; you were already attacked in your home after the curse broke, and despite it being months since, no one is any less bitter. Why do you think I’ve had you under house arrest this entire time? If the wrong people were to know you were back, we’d have a riot on our hands. I won’t put Emma and Henry at risk like that.”

“Your concern for me is touching,” Regina noted dryly, despite not expecting anything else from the woman in front of her. Snow just exhaled a frustrated breath though, and pushed herself off the desk she was leaning against.

“Regina, I wish, I really do _wish_ that things between us were better,” Snow began, crossing the space between them. “I loved you like a sister once, but the wounds… they’re still fresh, for you and I both. But Emma loves you, and despite everything that’s happened, seems to still want you in her life, and I need to… I need to respect that. I’ve spent far too long trying to force her to stay away from you, and all its done is further damage the already unstable relationship that I have with her. I want something _better_ for this family, and if that means… if that means _accepting_ you into it as well, then that’s—that’s just something that I need to do.”

It seemed like a difficult pill for the woman to swallow, and yet she was, seemingly without any second thoughts about it.

Regina held up her hand to stop her though, an uncomfortable feeling twisting in her gut despite her hardened stare. “Please don’t get overly sentimental on me, Snow; this is a nice pantsuit and I’d rather like to keep my lunch down.”

“Regina, please,” Snow begged, her voice cracking with emotion as she pleaded with her eyes. The permanency of this future arrangement was beginning to weigh heavy on her once more, and Regina could see that it was breaking her heart. Just the sight of it made her immensely uncomfortable, as she in no way wanted to feel sympathetic towards _Snow White._ “Please, I know neither of us owes the other any favors, but I can’t lose my daughter. I can’t lose my grandson. I can’t lose my _family._ I don’t know what to do.”

“And you think I do?” Regina countered, backing up a few steps to give herself significant space between Snow and her onslaught of feelings. The woman’s eyes were beginning to water again, and Regina’s upper lip curled in distaste at the blatant show of emotion; was it not common practice to only show this kind of weakness in front of those you trust? This was completely inappropriate. “I don’t know what answers you came here expecting to find, dear; but I assure you, I don’t have them.”

“Before you and Emma came back, you were trying to figure out a way to break the curse with Gold,” Snow reminded her, wiping a stray tear from her cheek as she stood up a little straighter; her eyes alit with more purpose than they had just moments before. “You were trying to figure out a way to lift the boundary that surrounds the town, and although searching for an answer may not seem relevant anymore now that you’re back, I want you to… I _need_ you to help me figure out a way to break it correctly. _That’s_ what I’m asking for, Regina; the ability to at least be able to visit my daughter and grandson once they leave. It might not be the ideal solution, but I’m trying to respect Emma’s decision to be with you, to raise Henry with you. So please… help me.”

Regina pursed her lips, an apprehensive look on her face. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” she said finally, because breaking the curse would surely be much more complicated than what Snow was expecting. “And while I’ll admit that Emma and I have been… _planning_ to fix a portion of the problem, there will surely be more obstacles in our way; some of which may not be repairable. I cannot give you any guarantees, and certainly not within the small time frame that we currently have.”

“Regina, I’m willing to let you stay in Storybrooke for as long as it takes to rectify this,” Snow bargained, desperation in her tone. “Alright? You will have as long as you need, just tell me how I can help. _Please._ I can’t lose my family; not again.”

Regina exhaled a long breath, folding her arms across her chest as she leaned against the wall. “What I still don’t understand, Snow, is why you came to me,” Regina responded, her curiosity about the subject still not sated. “Surely you could have just asked Emma to help you break the curse; she is as much a part of it as I am, after all.”

“Because…” Snow began, before sighing softly and leaning up against one of the large armchairs, her gaze planted firmly on her feet. “Because Emma already holds so much bitterness towards her father and me, and I needed her to realize that I’m genuine in trying to make amends. I want her to see that I’m willing to accept you as a part of her life, as a part of all our lives, and I was hoping my actions would speak louder than my words. If I had come to her instead, it would have seemed as though your part in all this was irrelevant to me.”

“My part in all this _is_ irrelevant to you, Snow,” Regina reminded her, seeing through her steady line of bullshit. “So the bottom line is, you’re only doing this to make yourself look good.”

“Perhaps,” Snow admitted, which Regina was surprised to hear. She looked up then, making eye contact with her before finishing, “And although it sounds selfish, it easily could be a gateway to something genuine. I want to mend the relationship with my daughter, Regina, and if accepting you is going to do that, then that’s what I’m going to do. Besides, I was… I was afraid that with how fragile things have been between us lately, that she would refuse to help just to spite me. This seemed like a more viable approach.”

“She wouldn’t,” Regina responded without thought, not intentionally trying to ease Snow’s worries and yet finding herself doing so nonetheless. Snow furrowed her brow then, and Regina decided that if she was going to be honest, then she might as well do so completely. “Refuse to help you out of spite,” she explained softly. “Emma’s been… fairly angry with herself, for having upset you like that. She knows what you stand to lose, and should she have foreseen any other options, I’m sure she would have chosen not to do this to you.”

Snow’s eyes welled up with emotion once more, and Regina had to stop her before she started _weeping_ all over her like some kind of hormonal teenager. “Do try to pull yourself together, Snow; you and I are not nearly comfortable enough with each other for this level of emotion, and frankly you’re beginning to embarrass yourself.”

Snow ignored the jibe though, and gave Regina a soft smile instead that, in the end, she found herself even _more_ uncomfortable with. “Thank you,” she responded softly. “For telling me that, Regina; I appreciate it.”

Regina resisted the urge to outwardly roll her eyes at the sentiment. “It wasn’t for you, dear; I was merely correcting your mistaken assumption. You generally have an abundance of those.”

“Regardless, you didn’t have to,” Snow pointed out, once again ignoring the jibe in favor of something genuine between them, and that made Regina fidget uncomfortably because no, she really _didn’t_ have to tell her that. But she refused to dwell on it however and pushed onwards to the topic at hand, refusing to allow Snow White to make her feel uncomfortable in her own home.

“You still need to understand that what you’re asking of me isn’t simple,” Regina told her as she allowed her gaze to rest on the window on the far side of the room, looking out at her apple tree in the back yard. Crossing her arms over her chest, Regina glanced back at Snow and continued, “Rumple seems to have this theory that—”

“One of you may be individually cursed,” Snow finished for her, voice soft. “I know; I was the one who relayed the message to Emma from Gold. My… theory, at the time that I heard it anyway, was that you had somehow found a way to curse Emma before she was even born, but Emma seems to think that you wouldn’t do that.”

“I _wouldn’t_ do that,” Regina responded, voice growing a little terse because it felt like Snow was still slightly disbelieving about what she was or wasn’t capable of. “But whether you believe me or not is of no matter, because even should we find out which one of us is cursed, there isn’t a guarantee that we could reverse it. And even if we did manage to succeed in that area, you seem to be overlooking one very large factor, which is that the curse needs _Emma’s_ True Love’s Kiss to break it completely, and that means it needs to be with me.”

“I’ve already come to terms with the fact that you kiss my daughter, Regina. I may not like it, but I’m not naïve enough to think it doesn’t happen, so I’ll be far from surprised when you do again.”

“You’re missing the point, dear.” _As usual,_ Regina finished inside of her head, but for the sake of forgoing an argument at this point, kept her snide remarks internal. “If it was as simple as having True Love’s Kiss with Emma, the curse that surrounds one of us would already be lifted, as would the curse that envelops this town. Emma and I may love each other, but things between us are still rather broken, and until we find ourselves completely and utterly in love again, _happy_ with one another again, the curse will not lift.”

“In other words,” Regina continued, taking a step towards the other woman as she arched a pointed brow. “If you want the curse to break, then you need to become an advocate for the success of mine and Emma’s relationship, and quite frankly, I don’t know if you can do that.”

Snow was silent for a moment, and Regina watched a conflicting range of emotions pass over her face. As much as she wanted to support her daughter, Regina knew there was still a part of Snow that couldn’t stand the fact that Emma was with her; and for them to be _happy_ with one another… well, that would diminish the chances of them ever permanently separating, wouldn’t it? It was one thing to for Snow to stand behind Emma when she hoped the relationship would merely be temporary, but to actually _help_ them make it into something real, something honest and loving? That might be asking far too much.

But Snow’s expression masked over with determination, and to her credit she looked Regina square in the eyes when she told her, “If that’s what needs to be done, then I’ll support the relationship you have with her. I may not like it, and I may never like it, but at the end of the day, Emma finding her happiness in someone like you is a much preferable option to never seeing my daughter or grandson again. Family _has_ to come first.”

Regina quirked an eyebrow at that declaration. “Hm. Interesting. I would have thought you’d say that it would be better if we tried to find some other way,” she said, surprise in her tone. But Regina smirked then and, unable to help herself, added, “Compliance is a nice color on you, Snow; unfortunate it happened so late in life, it would have saved us a lot of bloodshed.”

“Do you really think provoking me is the best way to start this… tentative agreement that we’ve fallen into?” Snow countered, her gaze hardening as lines of irritation etched over her face. And no, of course it wasn’t, but sometimes Regina just couldn’t help herself. They had been rivals for a long time, after all; so long that sometimes it felt as though it had been forever.

“I find it’s rather a habit by now,” Regina admitted flippantly, shrugging it off. “Although I suppose I can make an effort to tone it down, if you’re going to be overly sensitive about it.”

Snow shot her a disbelieving look and exhaled hard through her nose, pursing her lips into a fine line. She said nothing however, which at least made Regina feel as though she had won. It was incredibly juvenile and she was aware of that, but sometimes it was the little victories in life that mattered. So much of her life lately had been filled with instability and a lack of control, that perhaps sometimes it was just comforting to fall back on old habits. 

“We do though, don’t we?” Snow asked after a long moment’s silence, making sure that they were on the same page, despite the obvious tension that still existed between them. “Have an agreement?”

Regina chewed on the inside of her cheek, mulling it over for a moment before she came to a decision. “Yes, dear,” she agreed softly. “I suppose we have an agreement.”

Whether or not it would amount to anything though, only time would tell.

**TBC…**


	32. Cursed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the month long wait. I was playing WoW, lol. It’s a problem.

**CHAPTER THIRTY TWO  
Cursed**

“I’m going to kill myself.”

Emma watched Regina look up from the newspaper as she strolled through the doorway of the study with that declaration, a singular eyebrow of the other woman’s beginning to arch at the blonde’s blatant exaggeration of her current state of mind. “You know, if your archery lessons aren’t going well, dear, it may be pertinent to try your hand at acting; you do seem to have a flair for the dramatics, after all.”

“It’s not because I suck at archery,” Emma responded flatly before throwing the first of many books she held in her arms on the desk in front of Regina. “Believe me, _I wish it was._ ”

She watched Regina peer at the cover of the book she threw down on the desk, the woman’s eyebrows rising as she read the cover. “’The Intimacy Dance’,” she read out loud. “’A Guide to Long-term Success in Gay and Lesbian Relationships’. Emma, why on _earth_ would you buy—?”

“Oh, it gets better,” Emma responded, her voice a little more high pitched than normal as she threw more books down on the table, each one another version of relationship help books, and more than half of them accenting the ‘lesbian’ aspect of it, like for some reason their problems were drastically different than any other couples. 

Well, alright, to be fair they really _were_ , but not because they were in a gay relationship.

“But the icing on the cake?” Emma continued, knowing her eyes were probably far wider than normal and her voice much more strained than it should be, but to be fair, she was now _traumatized._ “The blow-your-brains-out, worst part of all of this?” She threw another book down, the last one then, and Regina’s eyebrows practically flew off her head when she read the title.

_The Lesbian Kama Sutra._

“Ask me who gave these to me,” Emma prodded. “Go on, _ask me._ ”

But Regina seemed to have already reached the logical conclusion, seeing where Emma had just come from, and finally looked properly scandalized by the very idea of it. “ _Please_ tell me you’re joking.”

“Believe me, I really wish I was. She even _flipped through them_ and tried _talking_ to me about some of the stuff in them on her way to drop me off. And you know, I was on board with the whole… my mom being an advocate for the success of our relationship thing – since you know, she never bothered to be before – but _this?_ This makes me want to bang my head against a goddamn wall. Repeatedly.”

“You’re being dramatic, but nevertheless I agree that this is not something we need,” Regina said, picking up the books one by one with a look of distaste and throwing them in the waste bin. “Just tell your mother to stop overcompensating to overshadow her discomfort with this, because it’s clear that’s what she’s doing. Remind her that being a _silent_ advocate will do just fine. Although,” she amended, bitterness in her tone, “perhaps holding our breath over your mother’s silence is unwise, as she has never seemed very capable of keeping her mouth shut in the past.”

“Water, bridge, Regina; can you look at the big picture here? My mother just gave me a _sex book._ ”

Regina shot her an exasperated look as she continued to toss another self-help book into the trash. “I empathize with the embarrassment this has caused you, dear, but I doubt this is life-shattering. Weren’t you friends with Snow before she… well, before she remembered that she happened to birth you? I’m sure this wasn’t the first sex conversation you’ve ever had with her.”

“Okay, that was _different_ and, by the way, something I’m still trying to forget ever happened.”

“So then file this away along with all those other conversations, and try to move on,” Regina told her, her movements suddenly halting before she threw the last book in the trash. She was looking down at it, and Emma’s gaze immediately followed hers.

“ _No._ ” The answer was immediate, already knowing the reason why Regina hesitated on that particular book. “Regina, we’re not even _having_ sex right now.”

Regina shot a brief, yet vexed glance in the blonde’s direction before her eyes landed on the book once more. “I’m aware of what we are and aren’t doing, Emma, thank you; but I have to admit that I am a little curious. I wasn’t aware a lesbian version existed of this book.”

She tried to open it then, but Emma’s hand came down on top of it with a loud bang, forcing it closed.

“Regina, we’ve got enough kink in our sex life to make up for the lack of crazy positions,” Emma tried to rationalize because, Jesus, they were _not_ keeping that book. Straightening her spine and moving her hand away from on top of it, she continued, “Besides, if you read that, and then you try to fuck me upside down or pretzel style or _whatever_ the next time we have sex, do you know what I’m going to be thinking the entire time? If my _mother_ was the one who _suggested_ this; which, in case you weren’t already aware, is a surefire way to kill my lady-boner in about two seconds flat. So unless you never want an orgasm from me again, I’m gonna suggest that you throw that damn thing away like, _now_ preferably.”

Regina exhaled an exasperated sigh, and made an overdramatic showing of picking up the book, dangling it over the waste bin, and letting it fall into it with a loud bang. “Happy?” she deadpanned.

“Not exactly the word I’d use to describe my emotional state right now, no, but thanks for asking.”

Regina didn’t even bother to hide the roll of her eyes before she rose from her chair. “Traumatic parental advice aside, I assume everything else went well today?”

“Archery lessons sucked like always. I really don’t understand how I can aim a gun perfectly fine and then accidentally kill a bird when I was going for a very large target board instead.”

“The mechanics of the weapons are different,” Regina rationalized, before her eyebrows rose and she asked, “You killed a bird?”

Emma scrunched up her nose as she leaned against the desk. “Yeah, like three shots in today. Mary Margaret cried over it and gave it a mini-funeral; it was a mess.”

Regina looked amused at that, but suppressed it as she crossed the room. “As entertaining as it is to hear about your mother’s unnatural bond with woodland creatures, or your failed attempts at actually _succeeding_ at the hobby you’ve chosen, I was more referring to your therapy session. Is everything… going well?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess. Today he made me write out a list of—” But Emma’s words died in the back of her throat then as she noticed what Regina was reaching for and _Jesus,_ how had she not noticed before that it was back in its original spot? An uncomfortable feeling swirled in the pit of her gut, tightening and pulling and making her feel a little light headed.

Regina, noticing the drop off of the other woman’s sentence, turned around then to be greeted by the sight of a very pale Emma Swan. “Emma, what…?” she began, before it seemed to click in her head and she realized why the blonde looked like she was fighting an anxiety attack. “Oh, _no,_ ” she quickly tried to explain, placing the decanter back down on the mantle and turning to her. “This isn’t—I made some cider today, and I just wanted to put the decanter to some use; it’s fine crystal, and I just thought it was far too beautiful to be hidden away and not used, even if this was not the use it was intended for. There’s no alcohol in this, I promise you.”

Emma swallowed, repeating Regina’s last sentence over in her head to assure herself that it was okay, and eventually nodded. “Sorry, it’s just— I… you know. Sorry.”

“I should be the one who’s sorry, Emma; I should have forewarned you, as I’m sure the amber liquid bears a striking resemblance to… what used to be inside of there.” Regina lightly chewed on her bottom lip, looking guilty. “I really am sorry, I could put it away again if you—”

“No,” Emma interrupted quickly, not wanting Regina to feel even more burdened by her problems, even if it was over something minor. “No, that’s—it’s fine. It just took me by surprise is all. Gimme a glass?”

After a moment’s hesitation, most likely because she was taken aback by the blonde’s quick switch from a near-panic attack to being relatively fine again, Regina shot her a soft smile. “Of course.”

As Regina poured her a glass, Emma tried to resume a bit of normalcy as she cocked her head and asked, “Isn’t that gonna go bad in there? I thought cider had to be refrigerated.”

“Believe me, dear,” Regina started, turning around to hand Emma a glass. “By the time I’ll need to refrigerate it, there won’t be anything left to go bad.”

“Why, is your arrogance the special ingredient?” Emma asked, smirking so Regina would know she was kidding. Sort of. 

Regina shot her a look that let Emma know she wasn’t as funny as she thought she was, before she invited a second opinion with, “Why don’t you taste it and see for yourself?” 

Emma obliged, yet went into it without high expectations. It was just apple cider; how great could it be?

“ _Oh,_ wow that’s—” Emma started after she had had her first taste, surprise washing over her expression as she honestly didn’t think it would be anything that amazing but God, _was she wrong._ It was easily one of the top five things she had ever had touching her tongue, and that was because the other four were Regina’s various body parts. “Shit, Regina; why the hell don’t you make this all the time?”

“Before I answer that, I’d like the record to show that it was confidence, not _arrogance,_ that led me to make those statements.”

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Emma brushed off after taking another sip and waving her hand. “Now explain to me why we don’t have this all day every day. You’ve been holding out on me, and I’m pretty sure that’s grounds for a divorce.”

Regina smirked, taking a small sip of her own; she looked very pleased with herself at Emma’s reaction. “We’d actually have to be married to get a divorce,” she reminded her, sounding amused.

“Technicality.”

“And I don’t make it often because I’m very particular about the time I should harvest the apples for it, so it’s seasonal.” A small pause, and then with a glance at the expression on Emma’s face she chided, “Oh, don’t pout, dear.”

“You basically just kicked my taste bud’s puppy, Regina; how the hell else am I supposed to look?” Emma defended, the pout growing deeper. “You really can only do this a couple times a year? You can’t like—improvise with other less-perfect apples?” 

“Even if I was willing to sacrifice some of the unique taste just to sate you, I hardly think a diet that consists solely of apple cider would be very healthy,” Regina told her, before taking another sip and switching the subject. “Anyway, as you were saying before… Archie made you write out a list of what today?”

“Oh. Uh… just… things.”

Regina’s brow rose disbelievingly. “ _Things?_ ”

“…Triggers,” Emma admitted, sounding a little guilty herself now since she knew how Regina was going to react. The woman’s face crumbled a little at the information, and Emma’s heart ached because she knew she had made that happen. In the end though, she knew Regina wouldn’t want her to lie, and she had never really been good at avoiding questions.

“You mean like the decanter,” Regina realized, her tone soft and sullen.

“No,” Emma denied immediately, before Regina shot her a disbelieving look and she amended, “Okay, maybe a little; but it’s fine.”

“I’m so sorry,” Regina quickly apologized, looking ashamed of herself for not thinking how Emma would react ahead of time to something like that. “I won’t use it again; I don’t want you to—”

“No, Regina,” Emma tried, placing her glass down on the desk before grasping the other woman’s hands in hers. “Look, it’s… okay, Archie made me write out of a list, right? And then we went over it, and he reminded me that I couldn’t just avoid all of those things forever, you know? Life doesn’t come with trigger warnings, and I can’t expect everyone else to take my issues into account every time they’re around me. People are going to have decanters, Regina; I’m going to end up going places where they serve alcohol, or… or, you know, one day we’re probably going to fight again and it’s gonna make me…”

Emma took a breath, hoping this was coming out right but worrying, because of the look on Regina’s face, that it wasn’t. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned the fighting thing, but it had been one of her triggers; fighting with her, fighting with her parents… just feeling emotionally out of control in general. “All I’m saying, is that my issues are my own, and I gotta learn to deal with them without everyone babying me. I can’t live my life in some kind of protective, trigger-free bubble, Regina, because that’s not realistic. So just… relax about the decanter, okay? It fucked me up for a minute, but I’m fine now, okay? I’m fine.”

Regina pursed her lips into a thin line, silent for a moment as she looked at the woman across from her. Her fingers curling protectively within Emma’s grasp, she finally took a breath and said, “I know that it is perhaps rather unrealistic of me to believe that I can protect you from everything, but that doesn’t… it doesn’t mean that I don’t wish to try.”

Emma’s lips upturned into a soft smile at that, and she leaned in to gently rest her forehead against the other woman’s. “And I love you for that,” she breathed, because the warmth that enveloped her chest at those words seemed to overtake her. “But I don’t need you to shield me, Regina; I just… I just need you to support me, you know? To hold my hand when I’m freaking out, remind me that it’ll be okay, but don’t… don’t take me out of the world, because then I’m never going to be living in it.”

Regina smirked a little at those words. “You’re paraphrasing the bug right now, aren’t you?”

“More like plagiarizing actually; it’s pretty much word for word,” Emma admitted with a small shrug. “But still. I don’t… I don’t want to live my entire life worrying about what’s going to cause my next relapse; I don’t want my struggle with sobriety to take over my whole fucking life like my struggle with alcoholism did, you know? I just want to be normal again. I want to go back to the way things were.”

Regina’s smile was gentle then, her eyes softening in emotion as she delicately brushed a strand of hair away from Emma’s eyes. “I’m proud of you,” she whispered, the words tickling Emma’s lips as the brunette sought for eye contact. “You’ve come really far. It’s almost as though you’re actually becoming an adult, much to my surprise.”

“Hey, shut up,” Emma countered with a small laugh, gently hitting Regina’s shoulder. “Adult for like ten years now, standing right in front of you.”

“Legally perhaps,” Regina responded with an amused smirk. “But as that was about it, I think that can be categorized under the banner of ‘barely’.”

“Yeah well, we can’t all be eligible for AARP benefits,” Emma shot back, her tone light and teasing as she pulled away from Regina and cackled at the flash of offense on the other woman’s face for her daring to bring up her technical age like that. Regina _really_ liked to pretend that she was just the age she looked, and not how long she actually lived for; frozen in time or not. 

“Unless you wish to sleep on the floor tonight, I suggest you take that back,” Regina warned, her eyes flashing dangerously as she pointed at Emma, advancing on her until the blonde’s back was pressed up against the wall. Emma smirked, knowing it was all bravado and finding something strangely endearing in it. It was like… a game; it was light, it was fun, and there would always be a part of them both that enjoyed pressing the other’s buttons.

“Now why would I want to do that, when you’re actually kinda cute when you get all huffy and indignant at me?” Emma teased, her tongue resting on the inside of her cheek as she allowed Regina’s palm to lay flat against her torso, gently pinning her to the wall. 

“ _Cute?_ ” the former queen repeated disbelievingly. “I used to make women weep and grown men wet themselves with a mere glare, and yet you find my irritation with you _endearing?_ ” Her eyebrow arched then, a challenge and a warning as she got within mere inches of Emma’s face, and the blonde could do nothing but glance down at the woman’s lips as she licked her own.

“Endearing, and right now… incredibly sexy.”

Regina smirked, her gaze catching Emma’s before she leaned down and gently brushed her lips over the curvature of the younger woman’s jaw. “That’s only because I have you pressed up against a wall right now, dear,” she breathed into her ear. “You’re finding eroticism in our reversed roles because it’s new to you.”

“So?” Emma breathed, her heart beginning to race as she grasped for the hem of Regina’s button down shirt. “Maybe it’ll be good for us; the change. We fuck everything up the other way around. Don’t pretend like you’re not curious too…”

The last time they had kissed, Regina had also taken the lead, despite how briefly. It made Emma wonder if perhaps control was something Regina needed in order to help her pick up the shattered remnants of her self-worth; and if that was the case, then Emma was more than happy to comply. In the end, she too was sick of the routine they had fallen into, because she had demonstrated on more than one occasion that she really shouldn’t be trusted with being in charge. Maybe something different would be... better, _healthier_ for them.

But Regina just gently took Emma’s chin in her hands, turning the woman’s head in order for the blonde to meet her gaze. “You still don’t understand, do you?” Regina breathed, her brow creasing in a mixture of distress and empathy. “Our problem isn’t _who’s_ in control, Emma, but our obsession with one of us needing to have it in the first place.”

Emma’s eyebrows knitted in confusion, and Regina gave her a soft, understanding smile as she continued, “Do you remember the night before the curse broke, do you… remember when we made love?”

Emma nodded, silent. Of course she remembered; how could she forget?

“That was... one of the most beautiful experiences of my entire life,” Regina softly admitted. “So much that it physically aches when I question if I’ll ever have something like that again. It was… pure; it lacked control, reason, or direction. It was just… it was _emotion,_ Emma, and it was the truth that began to break down the walls of the curse. What we did before, that was just a game to us; but what we’ve done since… became almost a dangerous obsession. We immersed ourselves in it, let it consume us and define us, and in the end, all it did was destroy us.”

“It’s not a lifestyle, Emma; not for us,” Regina reminded her softly, catching the blonde’s gaze once more. “It was just a game that we took too far.”

Emma pursed her lips, staying silent for a moment while she mulled that over. But even as she paused to consider it, she knew within seconds that Regina was right; in the end, they had taken something fun and turned it into something fairly dangerous, and Emma wished she knew why. Their anger perhaps, their sadness and their loneliness; it bled into their little game and tainted it with something dark to reflect their shared sense of self-loathing. But did that mean that they had to give it up completely? If they were happy again, would they be able to play their little games in the way they had before, or had they managed to ruin it completely?

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t do stuff like that anymore?” Emma asked softly, hoping her disappointment wasn’t evident in her voice, as she knew that perhaps that might be the best decision for them.

“I’m saying we shouldn’t let it define us,” Regina corrected, sliding her fingers down Emma’s wrist to tangle their hands together. “We need to be more than aggressor and subordinate; we need to be _people._ We need to own ourselves, not each other.”

Emma nodded, understanding that. Chewing on her bottom lip for a moment as she stared at the floor, Emma tightened her grip on Regina’s hand before admitting, “That’s what I want, you know?” She looked up at her then, hoping Regina didn’t hear her voice crack with emotion when she said that, because this had been a sensitive subject for her ever since their last sexual encounter. “What we… what we had, that night before the curse broke? When I said that I wanted to… make love to you, that’s what I wanted. I just want… you, without all the other stuff; all the… all the mess, you know?”

“I know,” Regina whispered, giving her a gentle, yet sympathetic smile as she placed her forehead against the other woman’s. “It’s what I want as well, but we’re not… we’re not there, Emma. Not yet.”

“I know,” Emma breathed, not bothering to hide the disappointment in her voice this time, as Regina already knew where she stood in regards to that. Bringing their clasped hands up to her mouth, Emma lightly brushed her lips against Regina’s knuckles before she asked, voice filled with uncertainty and insecurity as she looked up at her, “But we’ll get there… right? Some day.”

Regina smiled at her, tightening the hand that Emma held in her own. “I’d like to think so. Perhaps even much sooner than I originally imagined.”

They made eye contact then, the brunette’s soft smile becoming infectious and causing another to slowly grace Emma’s lips, before she finally closed the space between them. The kiss was tender, slow and soft, the two of them standing a mere fraction of an inch apart with their hands locked between them. Emma could feel the beat of Regina’s heart against the back of her hand, felt the way it skipped before it became a steady, rapid pound inside of her ribcage, and as the blonde parted her lips in invitation, Regina slipped her tongue inside and began to drink up the last of her doubt. Because they were getting better, much faster than either of them had ever thought they would, and when Emma looked back on a month ago; hell, even a week ago… it seemed almost surreal, that things between them were beginning to reflect how they used to be so very long ago.

Regina left her lips and began kissing the blonde’s chin, her cheek, her neck, to land once more on the underside of her jaw as she untangled her hand from Emma’s. As it found its new home atop her left breast, Emma found herself exhaling a shuddered breath of air, the sound almost coming out like a desperate whine as she pressed her hips against the other woman’s. And it was terrible; it was absolute fucking shit because Emma knew they didn’t have time to get into this right now. She knew that Regina knew as well, but unlike her, she was certain Regina didn’t care.

But they couldn’t keep putting this off, and so while it almost physically _pained_ Emma to do so, she placed her hand on Regina’s hip and gently encouraged the other woman off of her. “Henry’s gonna be home in like an hour,” she reminded her, slightly breathless as she pushed some of the hair back away from her eyes.

“And?” Regina countered, her own breathing relatively labored as she looked at the woman against the wall, her pupils so dilated it made her eyes look almost black. Emma wanted to jump on her, but restrained herself. It was extremely difficult. “Last I checked, an hour is more than enough time to…” Regina smirked, her tongue peeking out to briefly wet her bottom lip as she allowed her eyes to drag over the expanse of Emma’s form, “explore _other_ areas of intimacy…”

Oh, fuck her.

“Why, _why_ did you have to do this now?” Emma whined, tangling her fingers in her hair in frustration as she slumped her entire body weight against the wall. “You promised, Regina; we can’t keep putting this off, as much as I…” Her eyes raked over Regina’s form, drinking her in, allowing the woman’s curves to drive her absolutely insane as she ached to see her bare skin again. “God, you know I’d do whatever PG-13 bullshit you wanted me to before I ultimately end up fucking myself in the shower later, but… but my parents took Henry for a reason, and we gotta—I hate it, I really, really hate it right now – but we gotta do it. We’ve stalled long enough.”

“The spell will take ten minutes, Emma, if that,” Regina tried to reason, despite Emma recognizing it for what it was: stalling. But Regina still tried, lacing their fingers together once more as she pulled the blonde towards her. “You’re saying you’d rather do that _now_ instead of… more enjoyable endeavors?”

She quirked an eyebrow at her, an enticing gesture meant to distract as her other hand slipped around Emma’s waist, bringing the blonde in so she could place a hot, open mouthed kiss against the base of her neck. Emma groaned, her eyes falling closed for one short second before she got her bearings and tried to bargain with, “Spell first, if it won’t take that long. Then we can… mmm… then we can do whatever you want…”

Regina sighed heavily, and pulled away enough to look Emma in the eyes as she told her, “Do you _honestly_ think that either of us will be in the mood after that? It isn’t as though we’re searching for rainbows and unicorns, dear; a curse is bound to put a damper on things, should we find one.”

“We may not,” Emma reasoned, although she knew the chances of that were fairly slim; right now, it was the only viable theory they had. “And do _you_ honestly think that if we… I don’t know, groped each other for a good half an hour, that we’d be in the mindset to do the spell afterwards? Come on; we’ll be lucky if we’re even competent enough to pull away from one another and get into a cold shower.”

From the look on Regina’s face, Emma gathered that the answer was no, but that it would be preferable to her nonetheless. “Regina,” Emma coaxed softly, her tone understanding as she lightly touched the other woman’s face. “Look, I get that this… I know it scares you, finally _knowing_ that something might be wrong with one of us, but we need to—we have to fix this, and this is the first step in doing that. Please.”

“And what if there isn’t a second step?” Regina countered, pulling away from her. “What if I can’t distinguish whose magic it is, and we’re left knowing something is wrong with one of us with no viable way to fix it? Do you really want that knowledge in the back of your mind; truly _knowing_ that one of us may never be fully happy?”

“Even if you can’t figure out who did it from this spell, Regina, we’ll find a way. Okay? I promise.”

Regina shook her head, a disbelieving look crossing her face as she ran a frustrated hand through her hair. “You can’t promise me that.”

“Well I am anyway, so just… just _trust_ me, okay?” Emma tried, stepping closer to her imploringly. “I mean, fuck, I’m the ‘Savior’, right? This probably falls under my job description or something.”

Regina side-eyed her, her lips pursing into a thin line as she crossed her arms over her chest. After a long moment she let out a hard puff of air through her nostrils and relented with, “I’m more than aware of the overactive state of your libido, and if you’re honestly willing to put aside pleasure for something like _this_ then… then I suppose I can see how important this is to you.”

It wasn’t a yes, not really; but it was close enough.

“I just… I want things to work out, you know?” Emma tried to explain, an apologetic look on her face for making Regina go through with this when the woman would clearly prefer to live in blissful ignorance. But in the end, she knew this way was better. “I want us to be happy, I want the curse to break right, I want to be able to see my family, _all_ of my family, whenever I want. I don’t want this hanging over our heads for the rest of our lives, and I definitely don’t want either one of us to never be able to feel true happiness, should that be what’s wrong. I know we’ve been such a mess, but I really fucking hope we deserve better than that.”

Regina sighed softly, her gaze resting out the window as she wrapped her arms around her midsection. It was a long time before she spoke, but when she did it was soft, yet ultimately compliant. “Fine,” she breathed, turning on her heel. “Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

Emma said thank you, but she doubted it was even heard as Regina strode out of the room faster than the blonde could even process. Soon she was right behind her though, taking the steps two at a time to meet Regina in her bedroom, where she had hidden the wand. They hadn’t wanted Henry to get ahold of something that had the potential to be dangerous, as all magic generally was unless wielded properly, and the kid knew better than to go snooping in his mother’s room. At least, apparently, after The Great Christmas Present Fiasco of ’08.

Emma closed the door behind her, hearing the latch click softly shut before she learned against the frame, watching Regina stand on her toes to reach the wand hidden away in the back of her closet. When she saw that she finally had it in her hand, Emma pushed herself off the door and began crossing the space between them. “Regina, it’ll… it’ll be _fine_ ,” she tried, watching a distressed look cross over the other woman’s face as she stared at the object in her hand. “Okay? Whatever it is, it’s going to be fine, I promise.”

She placed a gentle hand on the brunette’s waist, but Regina just scoffed and moved away from her; just enough to make a point that she wasn’t interested in being placated right then. “I really wish you would stop promising things you cannot deliver; it’s entirely counterproductive.”

“Sorry,” Emma mumbled, feeling badly that her attempt at comfort failed rather miserably. She knew she couldn’t promise something like that, yes, but in the end, it was at least a promise to try; because she would, she would always try to make it better. She would always try to make Regina happy. Maybe she had sucked quite terribly at it in the past, but she had vowed to get better.

“Do you…” Emma tried after a long stretch of silence, “do you want to do me first? I know you thought it was stupid last time, but it’s still better to know. What if we’re both cursed?”

“That’s highly unlikely, but as I don’t wish to argue with you right now, we’ll do it your way,” Regina practically snapped, her fear over this coming out in the form of irritation. Emma knew that though, she knew that this was hard for her, and so she didn’t comment on the woman’s sudden short temper. Pursing her lips, all she did instead was hold out her hand in offering, and after a brief glance in her direction, Regina exhaled a hard breath before forcefully taking the blonde’s hand in her own.

“This may feel a bit strange,” Regina warned her as she held the wand up, almost at eye level. “It will be… for lack of a better term, almost _scanning_ you, to see if there’s darkness that resides beneath the surface. If there is, it will manifest into a projection of its physical form.” Emma nodded in understanding, watching the brunette take a long inhale of breath as she steeled her concentration. 

Regina’s hand trembled then, just slightly, but enough for Emma to notice as the wand wobbled in front of her vision. Squeezing the woman’s hand in her own, Emma shot Regina a reassuring smile, but she doubted it made a difference as the brunette seemed to be staring through her, rather than at her.

And then Emma felt it, this fierce sense of cold that suddenly washed through her entire body. She gasped sharply at the invasive feeling, exclaiming, “Jesus, that feels—”

“Shh!” Regina snapped, not wanting Emma to disrupt her concentration, and Emma’s mouth snapped closed. Thankfully it was over quickly, but in the end, nothing changed; nothing manifested, the air around her was just… empty, save the harsh wave of pessimism that clouded over Regina so fiercely that Emma could feel it herself.

“What did I tell you?” she snapped, like she was _angry_ at Emma for making her do that, as in the end, it only probably furthered her own fear that it was she who was cursed.

“Look, okay, so maybe I’m not cursed, but that doesn’t mean that you’re—”

“Oh, don’t be an imbecile,” Regina shot back, upset swirling behind her chestnut eyes as she stared at the woman across from her. “You and I both know exactly what’s going to happen when I use the spell on myself, and I honestly would prefer it if you stopped trying to make me feel better with your ridiculous platitudes.”

Emma sighed softly, but didn’t argue with her. She didn’t want to upset Regina any more than she already was; she felt badly enough about this as it was.

Furiously shaking her head, Regina’s grip on Emma’s hand turned almost painful as she immediately turned the wand on herself, apparently needing to just get this done before she lost her nerve. Emma felt her heart begin to beat heavily in her chest, suddenly terrified that Regina would be right; not because she didn’t think they could fix it even if she was, but because of what it would do to Regina’s mental state should her pessimism prove to be completely valid.

She watched as Regina began to slowly bring the wand down over her form, her hand shaking more than ever. And for a split second, Emma honestly thought that nothing was going to happen, but then Regina gasped hard, her whole body jerking forward as this inky black stuff began to pour out of her ears, her eyes, her mouth, swirling into a dark cloud before them. It freaked out Emma so badly that she shouted, letting go of Regina’s hand and breaking the magical connection so suddenly that it seemed to lash backwards at Regina, bringing the woman to her knees as she struggled to breathe.

“You… _idiot!_ ” Regina shouted in between large gulps of air, the black cloud beginning to disappear. “Do you have _any_ idea how dangerous it is to break a connection in the middle of a spell?!”

“Regina, I—I’m sorry, it just… it freaked me out and I didn’t—”

But Regina was barely listening to her, her fury and upset suddenly merging into an uncontrollable cloud of emotion as she screamed in rage at the answer she had been given and threw the wand against the wall, the force of the impact looking as though it broke it before it fell heavily to the floor. 

Well, if they weren’t on Gold’s hit list before, they certainly were now. 

But Emma barely had time to contemplate that, let alone care about it, as Regina’s lack of a conduit caused her magic to explode outwards, knocking the blonde flat on her ass as every breakable surface in Regina’s room shattered. Glass rained down from the mirror on the wall, and Emma had to roll out of the way in order not to be hit by its remnants before she frantically crawled on her hands and knees towards Regina, forcefully grasping the woman’s hand in her own.

“Regina! Regina, calm down!”

Regina shut her eyes tightly then, struggling to breathe in order to calm herself despite how upset she clearly was. “I _told_ you,” she seethed through her teeth. “I damn well _told_ you…”

“I know, I know,” Emma tried, moving herself close enough to wrap the other woman up in her arms. She felt terrible; she knew this was a possibility, and she knew exactly how Regina was going to react, and yet she pushed for it anyway. Regardless of the possibility of fixing it since they now knew the problem, a part of her still regretted it. She didn’t want to do this to her. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry…”

Cradling Regina’s head in her hands, she encouraged the other woman to rest in the crook of her neck as she held her. A soft sob was released then, followed by a hand pressing to her lips as Regina tried to stifle the emotion that was threatening to envelop her. “I’m going to kill her,” she breathed, the words sounding fierce despite the distress she was feeling in that moment. It caused a shiver to roll down Emma’s spine at the undeniable promise in it, at the rage and anger that was building behind her veil of tears. And in that moment, Emma knew that the woman’s words weren’t just bravado; that Regina honestly would do exactly what it was that she was promising to do, without thought or hesitation as to what else in her life it would kill in the process. “I will _destroy_ her for doing this to me…”

“Who? Regina, _who?_ ” Emma tried, not having expected Regina to have known who it was. Gold said it was a small chance, that Regina would have needed to… something, God she couldn’t remember right then, but—

Regina just shook her head though, apparently not intent on talking about it right now as she tried to pull away from her. “It doesn’t matter,” she told her, voice hoarse as another tear rolled down her cheek. “It doesn’t matter… I won’t involve you in this, Emma; I won’t. This isn’t your fight; this isn’t your problem.”

“I’m already involved in this, Regina!” Emma exclaimed, grasping the woman’s hand in hers once more as she pulled the brunette back to her. “Regina… Regina, look at me,” she coaxed, her own voice sounding desperate and strained, because she feared what would happen should Regina go off on her own on some kind of vengeful mission. She… she feared who she would become. 

When the brunette’s bloodshot eyes finally landed on hers, Emma wasted no time in telling her, “If someone hurts you, they hurt _me._ And I swear to God, I won’t rest until we get whoever did this to you to undo it, okay? But just please… _please_ don’t shut me out, because I…” Her voice hitched then, and yet Emma told her honestly, hoping the repercussions of it wouldn’t be terrible, “I’m scared of what you might do, of what this might turn you into if you do this alone. You’re not _alone_ anymore, Regina, okay? So just… please just let me help. Let’s do this the right way, _please._ ”

That, at least, apparently seemed to strike a chord in Regina, and the woman turned away from her, a look of shame on her face as she realized the line she was getting dangerously close to. Instead of thinking of her options, she had immediately gone to murder, and that… that scared Emma. And in the end, it was Regina’s final decision that meant more than her first instinct should she choose not to actually act on it, and so Emma hoped that Regina would try to reel herself back in a little before she did something that she’d ultimately regret.

“Regina…” Emma tried softly, but the woman just waved her off as she rose to stand, her arms covering her midsection as she quite literally tried to hold herself together.

“Please just…” Regina begged, her voice hoarse and broken as she avoided eye contact with the woman on her bedroom floor. “I’m—I’m truly sorry that I frightened you, Emma, but I need—I need a minute alone. Please. This is… it’s quite a lot to process. I can’t—I just need a moment to think.”

Emma pursed her lips into a thin line, worry etching across her face as she honestly didn’t think Regina was in a state of mind to be left alone – especially with her magic on the fritz in an already unstable environment – but in the end, Emma didn’t want to force herself where she clearly wasn’t wanted. She respected Regina more than that.

That didn’t mean, however, that she wouldn’t be camping directly outside of the door, just in case anything happened. If Regina lost control of her magic again and she wasn’t around, she could very well bring down the entire house on top of herself. And so as Emma stood, she nodded in understanding.

“Alright, but… I’ll just be right outside, okay?” she tried, wanting Regina to know that even though she needed space, that she wasn’t going to abandon her. “If you need me, please just… just come and get me, okay? I won’t be far.”

Regina didn’t say anything, but Emma did see the slightest evidence of a small nod after the woman swallowed hard and turned away from her, and that was good enough for her. And so she backed out of the room then, her heart weighing heavy in her chest as the door clicked behind her, the sound reminding her that she was completely shut out from the one situation she desperately needed to fix.

God, she wished it had been her that was cursed. If Emma could wish for anything in that moment, she’d wish for that, because they… they desperately needed an answer, a way to fix the curse on the town, but she didn’t want Regina to be the one to carry that burden, that pain. She had had enough terrible crap happen in her life, and it just wasn’t fair.

It just wasn’t fucking fair.

**TBC…**


	33. Bound

**CHAPTER THIRTY THREE  
Bound**

A storm raged outside, the darkened clouds swirling above the mansion as rain pelted against the windows with all the force of its inhabitant’s anger. Regina closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the sound of it pound within her eardrums as she immersed herself in it, thankful that for once, her fury wasn’t manifesting into an uncontrollable fire or shattered glass. Regardless, she knew it wouldn’t be allowed to last as a loud crack of lightning echoed through the courtyard, and the door to her bedroom hesitantly cracked open.

“…Regina?”

Regina opened her eyes, but did not turn around. She heard Emma’s footsteps pad against her carpet, and when gentle fingers touched her waist the storm began to dissipate as quickly as it had come. “It was comforting,” Regina told her softly, wishing Emma hadn’t made her stop. “It drowned everything else out.”

“I know,” Emma responded softly, almost apologetically. “But if someone were to see it, it would probably cause one hell of a panic. The storm was only above the house; it was obvious it was magical.”

Silence followed as Regina watched the dark clouds became a nonthreatening white again, the torrential rain turning into nothing but a light drizzle before it disappeared completely. She sighed heavily, leaning against the window sill as Emma kept a light hold on her, obviously not wishing to upset her by inserting herself where she knew she hadn’t been invited.

“I’m sorry I had to ignore your request for space,” Emma apologized. “If you… if you think you can get a handle on yourself, I’ll leave again.”

“No,” Regina murmured softly, realizing that perhaps, she didn’t want to be alone after all. “No, you don’t have to leave.”

Emma pursed her lips for a moment, staying silent as she just watched Regina, no doubt waiting for an invitation to talk about it. When none came however, all she said was, “I asked my parents to keep Henry for the night. I thought it… I figured it might be better for you if you didn’t have to worry about your emotions fueling your magic and accidentally hurting him. This way, he’s safe and it gives you time to learn to deal with this on your own.”

Regina nodded, wishing she wasn’t so unstable in that moment that Emma had to make sure their son was elsewhere, but understanding it all the same. It was just a lot to process, and at the moment she was having a difficult time trying to accept that this had actually happened. She had known, ever since Gold suggested it, that she would be the one, but she hadn’t actually fathomed that it would have been because of _her._

In a way, she felt almost betrayed by it. Which was foolish, as that was no doubt the reason this curse was cast on her in the first place.

“I should have known,” Regina said after a long moment’s silence, still staring down at her backyard. “I was surprised, when there had been no repercussions. I thought her ridiculous emotions caused her to lose her touch; how foolish I had been.”

“Who?” Emma asked softly, her arms now sliding fully around the brunette’s waist as she rested her chin on her shoulder. Regina inhaled a deep breath, and exhaled it as a long sigh as she stared out at her apple tree, finding herself remembering days long past. Days that she hadn’t thought mattered anymore.

“Maleficent, dear,” she answered softly, before turning her head a little to better face the woman behind her. “You honestly hadn’t guessed?”

“Wait a minute, your _ex?_ ” Emma asked, sounding surprised for some reason as she pulled away just enough to be able to move around to Regina’s side to catch her gaze.

“Did you miss the part where Rumple clearly stated that I would have had to be intimate with the caster to distinguish whose magic it had been that cursed me? I may have taken many lovers in my time, dear, but only a few had ever been able to wield magic. I would’ve thought you’d have figured it out.”

Emma blinked, recognition dawning on her features. Apparently, she _had_ forgotten, but she was clearly remembering it now as her expression went from surprised, to angry, to momentarily jealous before it ultimately tried to rest on sympathetic. This was why Regina hadn’t wanted to involve Emma; it would no doubt be uncomfortable for her when she knew that the brunette’s ex-lover was involved. 

“Curses had always been her forte,” Regina told her softly, turning once more to look out the window. “The one I used on your mother; the one I tried to use on you? It was created by her.”

“Awesome,” Emma responded dryly, obviously not keen on the mentioning of such things. But Regina just shot her an apologetic look before she crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry, I know you don’t like talking about it, but we can’t pretend it didn’t happen either.”

Emma sighed softly, running her fingers through her hair. “I know. I—I know. Sorry. Just keep going; I’m listening.” She moved then, coming to sit next to Regina on the bed, and after a moment’s hesitation she reached out and gently took the brunette’s hand in her own. Regina looked at it for a long second, weaving their fingers together before she finally continued, her eyes never leaving their clasped hands as she let out a small, disbelieving laugh.

“Is it completely ridiculous that I feel so immensely betrayed by this?” Regina asked, needing to know if she was being irrational with her feelings. “I treated her terribly; barely even considered her a confidant of mine, more an asset than anything else that I used and manipulated for my own benefit. And yet, in her eyes, I was her best friend. Perhaps her only friend; and if I was being honest, she was the closest thing I had to a friend as well, as sad as that may seem. I did care for her, in my own twisted way; or perhaps I merely relied on her for the company. It seemed I had grown used to it, and it did bother me when I no longer had it.”

“So wait a minute, what did you do to her?” Emma asked, apparently confused about the reason that Maleficent had cast the curse on her in the first place, even though Regina believed that answer to be fairly obvious.

“What did I do?” Regina repeated, surprised at the question. “I already told you once what I did, dear; she fell in love with me, and I broke her heart. Not in the most delicate of ways either.”

“No, I mean besides that,” Emma responded, waving that off like, for some reason, that was inconsequential. “Like did you kill her family or cause her to lose her kingdom or something? I mean what the hell caused this whole crazy, curse-you-to-never-be-happy-again vengeance thing she has going on?”

Regina’s eyebrows knitted. “I didn’t do anything else to her, Emma; that was it. Do you believe that not enough?”

“No, I mean—okay, like I watch SVU and stuff, I know some people do fucked up things when their heart is broken, it’s just…” Emma trailed off then, her eyebrows knitting like she was trying to figure out why this seemed different to her.

“It’s just what, dear?”

“It’s just so…” Emma began, before realizing the word she was looking for, and ended with, “ _human._ It’s almost petty, in a way, and it’s just… it’s very human.”

Regina’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t think of any of us as human?”

“No, that’s not—” Emma tried, but seemed a little frustrated by her own lack of an answer. She still seemed to be having trouble processing it. “I mean, I see you here, Regina, and I know you’re human. I know you’re flesh and blood, like my parents – like _Snow White and Prince Charming_ – even though before, I thought you all were just stories. But that’s the thing, you know? I guess a part of me still views your past like it’s a… fairytale.” Her expression washed with apology then, and she finished, “I’m sorry, I know that probably makes me sound like an ass.”

“You’re still disassociating,” Regina told her, understanding the other woman’s train of thought despite not truly getting why this was still difficult for Emma to process. “But you need to realize, Emma, that we’re all still people; our tragedies and our triumphs may have been reduced to nothing more than something of entertainment value to the people of your world, but to us, they are very much real, and very much a part of our lives. Nothing is black and white, and nothing is ever as simple as evil versus good. Your world may not seem to care in your storybooks about what caused evil to exist in the first place, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a reason. There’s _always_ a reason.”

“I know,” Emma responded softly, sounding ashamed of herself for regressing a little bit from her acceptance of what her reality had now become. “I know and I’m—I’m sorry, Regina. I didn’t mean to make it sound like your pain, or even hers, wasn’t enough of a reason to do the things that you did.”

Regina was silent, but nodded, accepting Emma’s apology. The blonde grasped her hand a little tighter then though, and told her, “But this is a good thing, right? I mean—obviously not the fact that you’re cursed, but that we know who did it. So I can just, you know, arrest her ass or something and we can force her to undo it. Where—wait, I mean, she’s… she’s _here_ right? The curse, it brought everyone over, so she has to be here.”

“Yes,” Regina murmured, although clearly not as optimistic as Emma was about the ‘simplicity’ in the solution, as she knew the true extent of it. “She’s here.”

“So where is she?” Emma asked, beginning to grow confused as she realized things weren’t adding up as smoothly as she thought they would. “I’d figure after the curse broke she’d be out for vengeance like everyone else, or at least show her face and kick up fuss, but I haven’t heard a single thing about her. Do you think she’s just lying low or something?”

“…Of a sort.”

“Regina,” Emma responded, looking at her lover who was refusing to catch her gaze. She was starting to realize that the brunette wasn’t being entirely forthcoming. “Where is she? You know, don’t you?”

Regina sighed softly. “Yes,” she admitted softly. “Yes, I know where she is, but I don’t— getting her to cooperate will bit more complicated than I’m sure you would expect.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“…Because she’s a dragon.”

Emma laughed at that, apparently thinking that Regina was joking, until she realized Regina wasn’t laughing with her, and her expression fell from amusement into utter disbelief. “Wait, _what?_ ”

“I turned her into a dragon, dear. And seeing as she does not have access to magic, it is unlikely that she can turn herself back into her human form. Besides,” Regina continued, sighing softly as she ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m incredibly wary about being near her again, which is why I locked her away in the first place. We’re blood bound; a foolish ritual I participated in at the beginning of our relationship before I truly understood the repercussions of it, and it may have disastrous ramifications should she get her hands on me; especially should I be touching _you_ at the time.” 

“Jesus, okay, I’m gonna—we’ll go back to that in a second,” Emma began, looking a little overwhelmed by the amount of information she was receiving that she had yet to understand fully. “But I’m still stuck on the fact that there is a _dragon_ somewhere in this town. How the hell haven’t we heard about this yet?”

“Because she’s locked beneath the library, dear; she’s quite harmless down there unless we were to release her, so there’s no need to worry. At least not quite yet.”

“Right, okay, dragon beneath the library; totally normal,” Emma responded, still sounding a little frazzled by it before she exhaled a long breath, puffing out her cheeks as she paused for a moment, trying to let all of this sink in. “Okay, past it,” she informed her, moving on. “But what the hell do you mean you did some kind of ritual with her?”

“It was…” Regina began, before sighing heavily and pinching the bridge of her nose. “It was one of my more foolish mistakes.”

“Yeah, getting that by the look on your face. What was it for?”

“It was… a ritual to invoke an exchange of power, in the simplest of terms,” Regina answered, before lightly chewing on the inside of her cheek. “However, blood magic is a very particular form of dark magic that requires one to steal the life essence of another in order to work. For most people, that is simply their blood; hence the name. For magic users, however…”

“So what, she can steal your magic?” Emma asked, looking at the brunette in disbelief. She was well aware by now that should one be drained completely of their magic, they would die; they already had that little scare once before while in New York. “Why the hell would you _ever_ agree to that?” But then she seemed to realize something, and her face drastically paled. “Oh my god, it wasn’t like—that wasn’t a _suicide pact_ or something, was it?”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous,” Regina answered, brushing it off despite knowing full-well that Emma already knew she had struggled with those kinds of thoughts long ago. Still, that wasn’t what it was about, so in that context at least, it was rather ridiculous. “And the bond between us goes both ways, so I wasn’t entirely at a disadvantage, beyond my lack of proper knowledge on the subject at the time. I found out later what it was primarily used for, but at the time, I… well, was more focused on another use for it.”

“Which was…?” Emma prompted, looking at Regina expectantly. The brunette flushed, feeling rather moronic for having to admit something like this out loud as it… well, it did not paint her in the best light; or rather the smartest light.

“…Sexual,” Regina quietly admitted, her voice barely above a mumble. Emma’s eyebrows rose, and Regina was quick to continue, “And yes, I realize how utterly moronic it was, to bind myself to someone for no other reason than physical pleasure. But at the time, I honestly believed that was all it was for; or rather was too distracted to think much about it at the time. It wasn’t as though she was offering this over tea, dear; my attention was… elsewhere. And she deliberately left out the part where it was permanent.”

Emma’s nose wrinkled in distaste, no doubt not entirely pleased about hearing the details of the other woman’s sex life before her. Regina couldn’t blame her; this wasn’t exactly a comfortable conversation to have with her current lover. “I’m—okay, I’m probably gonna regret asking this, but what exactly did it even _do?_ ”

Regina pursed her lips, trying to think of a way to explain this to her. “To put it into terms you’d understand, it was…” she began, searching her brain for the right words, “almost like magical asphyxiation. You understand why I like when you choke me, I assume? It was like that, only we took turns draining each other of magic just before we were about to… _release,_ and it intensified the feeling. Substantially.”

The blonde just stared at her.

“So you’re basically bound to someone in a really fucked up way for what, better _orgasms?_ ” Emma asked after a long pause, her tone utterly disbelieving, if not a little jealous that someone else held a part of her that she did not. That couldn’t be an easy thing for her swallow.

“Did you miss the part where I said I was deliberately misled?” Regina shot back, her temper rising due to her own shame over her mistakes. “I thought it was just about sex, Emma, and so I allowed it. Should I have thought it through before accepting? Yes, of course I should have. But I am certain I am not the only one in the world who has allowed their hormones to cloud their judgment. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I cannot change the past.”

“I’m not—!” Emma began a bit testily, but seemed to catch herself and repeated in a calmer tone, “…I’m not upset.”

“And yet, strangely, you bear striking similarities to someone who is.”

“Look, I’m not because—because it’s not _about_ me, okay?” Emma tried, her voice clearly frustrated, and at least she respected her enough to tell the truth. “You’re the one who’s cursed, you’re the one whose life this affects, and so I’m not upset because if I was, then it’d be selfish, alright? And I’m just—I’m trying very hard not to be selfish right now.”

Regina pursed her lips, glancing over at the woman next to her. “Emma, it’s…” She sighed softly though, deciding to go a different route before she even really began, and admitted instead, “If the positions were reversed, I’d be upset too. It can’t be easy, to find that the woman you’re bound to is bound to another. But I assure you, it’s not the same.”

“I know that,” Emma answered, exhaling a small breath as she pushed the hair back from her face. “True Love is obviously way different than some kinky blood magic ritual, but aren’t the end results the same? You can syphon magic from me because of our connection, and she can syphon magic from you because of yours. I know it’s _different,_ I know it is, but that—that similarity bothers me for some reason. I don’t know why.”

Regina chewed on her bottom lip, knowing precisely the reason as she told her softly, “Because you thought it was special.”

Emma sighed; it was long, defeated. “…Yeah.”

The look on the blonde’s face broke her heart, and Regina reached for her.

“Emma, you need to—you need to understand something,” Regina tried, facing the woman next to her as she gently placed a hand atop her thigh. “What you and I have, it _is_ special; and it’s rare, and it’s beautiful. What Maleficent and I did, it was just a spell; a spell that, generally, was only used by those who practiced blood magic regularly and needed sacrifices for their magic to work. They bound themselves to people they captured in order to drain them remotely. And that—that’s incredibly _violating,_ Emma; do you understand that? It’s robbing someone of the very essence of who they are, and more often than not, ended up killing them in the process. What you give me, is just that; what you _give._ There is a big difference; as if you didn’t want me to have what was inside you, I would never be able to touch it.”

Emma chewed the inside of her cheek, mulling that over for a moment before she finally nodded, understanding the difference. But then something seemed to hit her, and her hand shot out to touch Regina’s arm. “Wait a minute, if that stuff could be done _remotely—_ ”

“No, I—I understand what you’re concerned with, but it’s different when it’s magic that you’re trying to steal from someone, dear,” Regina explained. “There needs to be a physical connection, because magic needs to reside within something living in order to survive; if it at any point was not, then it would cease to exist. It cannot just travel through the air unbound.”

Emma looked a little confused by that, but nodded anyway, as she at least understood enough to know it wasn’t an issue, and that was all that mattered. “And the… blood thing, she wouldn’t be able to do that to you either; drain you, or whatever, if we got close?”

“No,” Regina assured her. “My magic protects me from that aspect of the spell, as it does her; otherwise I would simply kill her from here and be done with it. It works very different for those who are magical, and those who are not.”

“But she doesn’t have magic,” Emma tried to reason, apparently forgetting some very important factors, and only seeing the surface of things. “I mean, not right now, right? Cause Gold didn’t, so why would she—”

“Gold may not be able to reach for it at will at the moment, but he very much does have magic,” Regina explained patiently. “It’s a part of him, as it is a part of her. It’s just dormant right now because of the curse; as is my own, unless I am either in this house, or touching you.”

“Right,” Emma responded, remembering now what had happened the last time Gold was in this house. “He accidentally destroyed your chair. Sorry, I just— I knew that. Sorry.” She ran a frustrated hand over her face then, shaking her head like she was silently chiding herself for not thinking before she spoke. 

“Don’t apologize; I know this is a lot to take in right now. Magic can be very complicated, and the instability of it in this town makes it even more so.”

“Yeah,” Emma agreed softly, sighing once more before she straightened her spine and sat a little taller; encouraging herself to get back on track. “Okay, so… what’s our game plan here? Because right now I’m not seeing many options other than me going down there and figuring out a way to kick the shit out of a dragon, which… doesn’t exactly sound like it’ll go well.”

“It won’t, and you’re not,” Regina told her firmly, her tone implying that she was leaving no room for discussion. “I will not have you go down there alone and risk your life for me; that’s completely moronic.”

“Well it’s not like you can go down there, Regina; if she touches you she could get her magic back, and then… well and then we’re probably all fucked, because I doubt she’s gonna use it to remove the curse. Cause I mean, if I was trapped as a dragon for twenty eight years? Probably wouldn’t be that forgiving about it.”

“She can’t drain magic from me unless I am _using_ magic, and I cannot access my magic without you,” Regina reasoned. “So you are not coming.”

Emma looked at her incredulously. “Are you fucking—is that a _joke?_ What the hell are you gonna do without your magic against a _dragon_ , Regina? You’ll get yourself killed.”

“Emma, this isn’t up for discussion—”

“Don’t ‘this isn’t up for discussion’ me, Regina; I’m not your kid, you can’t just shut me down like that,” Emma shot back, furious that she would even attempt something like that on her. “There’s no way I’m letting you go down there alone; you could get hurt, or worse.”

Regina’s tone turned haughty then, and she snapped, “And you think you could do better?”

“No, I _don’t,_ ” Emma stressed, looking at her like she was insane for even thinking that. “The idea of taking on a dragon? Honestly makes me want to shit my pants. But at least I know how to use a weapon that isn’t magic, okay? I can just… I don’t know, shoot her, or something.”

Regina side-eyed her. “Unless you have silver bullets on hand, they will not pierce a dragon’s hide. The only thing your little gun will manage to do, dear, is enrage her. And then you will die. I will not, under any circumstances, allow that to happen.”

“Silver…?” Emma repeated, then blinked. “I thought that was for werewolves.”

“Pure silver will work on many beasts, Emma; not just werewolves. However, that is neither here nor there because even if you do manage to acquire some, I’m not letting you go down there. It’s far too dangerous.”

“Alright, just—” Emma began, holding up her hand to stop them both from exhausting that argument dry. And perhaps it was for the best, because with how stubborn they both were, they could be stuck in that circle for hours. Regina knew she certainly wasn’t going to budge on the matter, and she doubted Emma would either. “Okay. Maybe we’re just looking at this the wrong way, you know? Maybe the whole dragon thing doesn’t even have to be a factor.”

Regina furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if you just turn her back into a human?” Emma explained, looking at her expectantly. “And I don’t mean so we can reason with her to try to get her to lift the curse, because even if she said that she would, she’d still have to… I don’t know, drain us both just to get enough magic to even do it, right? So that’s obviously off the table, because there’s no way we could trust her to keep her word and not kill us outright.”

“But as a human, she’d be relatively harmless, right? She’d be an easy—” But Emma stopped then, and noticeably blanched before she could say the word ‘kill.’ Regina had been waiting for this, for Emma to realize what their options _truly_ were, and her lips turned down into a sympathetic frown as she watched the horror play out on the blonde’s face. “Jesus,” the blonde breathed, her eyes widening. “We’re just—we’re just sitting here, casually talking about _murdering_ someone and I just—fuck, I need a minute.”

Emma rose from the bed then, beginning to pace as she ran a shaky hand through her hair and seemed to be coaching herself to breathe. Regina’s stomach twisted uncomfortably in her gut at the sight, as she knew that, logically, this was what any _good_ person would feel when confronted with the necessity of murdering someone. She, however, did not feel any sort of sickness, or even horror by it. If anything, the only thing that bothered her about it, was that it was _Maleficent._

In some odd way, despite everything the woman did to her and how much Regina used her in turn, she did have some sort of strange attachment to her. She was her friend once; or she was as close as, anyway. So the thought of killing her? It unsettled her, but not enough for her to not want to do it. In the end, Maleficent’s life was meaningless when confronted with the bigger picture.

Her family’s happiness; _her_ happiness.

“Emma, I know that you’re—I understand that you’re struggling with this right now, but you should know that what you suggested, it isn’t an option.”

Emma swallowed, rubbing the back of her neck as she turned towards the woman on the bed. “Why?” Her voice came out cracked; strained. It pained Regina to hear it.

“Because I didn’t… personally turn her into a dragon; therefore I have no way of undoing it.”

Emma’s brow knitted. “But you said—”

“I know, and it was a poor choice of wording,” Regina interrupted, letting out an exasperated breath; not at Emma, but at herself. She should have been clearer. Or perhaps she should have cursed Maleficent in a different way; that certainly would have made things easier. “Maleficent had the ability to turn _herself_ into a dragon in our world,” she explained. “And I simply… kept her trapped in that form in this one. I wouldn’t know how to undo it; that’s not magic I’m well-versed in.”

“So what, we’re back to me shitting my pants over having to fight a dragon, and you stupidly thinking that you can stop me?” Emma asked, sighing heavily as she slumped against the far wall. Running her hands over her face, she asked in a muffled voice, “Is it totally fucked up that I’m way more comfortable with the thought of killing a dragon, since she won’t _look_ like a person when I do it? It seems more justifiable, even though it isn’t.”

Regina pursed her lips, and pointedly said nothing on the subject of murder. “Perhaps it’s far too premature anyhow, to think about any of this right now,” she tried instead. “Neither of us are going down there without a plan, and we’re certainly not attempting this until after Henry’s birthday. I won’t have him visiting us in the hospital or worse on the day he turns twelve; that is completely out of the question.”

“Your faith in our ability to succeed with this is astounding,” Emma responded dryly, lightly banging her head against the wall again.

“I’m not saying we can’t do this, Emma, but we need to be better prepared before we attempt it,” Regina explained, sighing softly. She wasn’t exactly experienced with being practically useless, and it was not a feeling that sat well with her. “Without my magic, this will be… rather difficult. Perhaps I should speak to Rumple, see what weapons he has stored away from the old world; I’m sure if nothing else, he’ll at least have a sword we could use. Many in our land were made from silver instead of steel, for purposes such as this.”

“Because slaying dragons was such a regular occurrence?” Emma asked, sounding a little disbelieving as she glanced at her. 

“Perhaps not a ‘regular occurrence’, no, but many kingdoms were still prepared should they ever have to face one, or any other beast that requires silver-tipped weaponry. It was rare, but not unheard of. In the meantime,” Regina continued, looking up at the other woman as Emma fidgeted uncomfortably, rubbing incessantly at her neck. She hated having to suggest this, as it went against everything she was trying to stand for, but in the end, she had to look at the bigger picture; and unfortunately, the bigger picture had Emma defying her wishes. It was just in the woman’s nature. “It may be pertinent to ask your father for lessons in swordplay.”

Emma threw out her hands, looking exasperated by the suggestion. “It’ll probably just end up being a shit show like my mom’s attempt at teaching me archery; I mean, I’m not exactly white knight material here, Regina.”

“See, that is where you’re wrong, dear,” Regina responded softly, looking at her like she couldn’t understand how Emma didn’t see her own potential. Not only was she the Savior, but she was a Charming; ridiculous acts of heroism were in her bloodline. “Like any other harebrained hero I’ve run across in my time, you’re both utterly foolish and incomprehensibly brave.”

“Yeah, I’m real brave here, Regina; practically fucking pissing myself over the thought of fighting a goddamn dragon.”

“Bravery and a lack of fear do not go hand in hand, Emma; your insistence to assist in this, despite being terribly afraid, is exactly what makes you brave. And immensely foolish, but I digress.”

Emma pursed her lips, keeping silent for a moment as she glanced at her. “Five minutes ago you were telling me you weren’t going to let me come along,” she mentioned, crossing her arms over her chest. Her voice was tinted with suspicion, believing this to be some kind of trick. “Now you’re telling me to get swordplay lessons from my dad and to prepare myself. Kinda contradicting yourself there, Regina.”

Regina sighed heavily, running her hands through her hair before she picked herself up off the bed and crossed the room to gaze out the far window. Silence washed between the two women for a moment before Regina took a breath and explained softly, “Do I want you to come along, to risk your life for me? No, of course not. I will try to stop you; with all the power that I have, I will try to stop you from being the brave idiot I know you’re going to be. But am I naïve enough to believe that it’ll work? No.”

“And I know that because…” she continued, but Regina found she had to pause for a second as her heart clenched in her chest, and her throat tightened just enough for her to have difficulty swallowing. “I know because, should the positions have been reversed, I would follow you without a second thought. That is—it’s just what you do, for someone that you love. And I both utterly adore and despise you for it at the same time.”

Emma’s eyes softened.

“I merely…” Regina glanced at her then, emotion swirling behind her chestnut eyes as she wrapped her arms around her midriff. “Should you follow me, _when_ you follow me, I just need for you to be prepared. I cannot lose you; not over anything, but especially not over this. My happiness is not worth your life.”

Emma exhaled a small breath at that, and moved to be at her side. As the blonde gently touched her waist, Regina looked away from her and set her gaze back out the window, staring idly at her apple tree below as Emma placed a gentle kiss on her shoulder. “Part of me wants to tell you that it is; that it is worth my life,” the blonde responded softly, keeping a gentle hold on the woman in her arms. “But nothing is worth Henry being parentless, and so we both—we need to be careful; research dragons, learn to fight with swords, whatever. And if we do this, then only one of us can go; you said yourself that us going together will be too dangerous.”

“I _can’t—_ ” Regina tried, and her voice cracked. She cleared her throat then, trying to suppress her onslaught of emotion as she continued, her voice stronger, “I will _not_ let you go alone. I won’t. That’s out of the question, so please stop pushing for it.”

Emma sighed softly, resting her chin on the brunette’s shoulder. “So then what do we do?”

Regina shook her head as she leaned back into the other woman’s embrace. “Perhaps we should just ignore it; leave things the way they are. The risks are too great.”

“We can’t do that, Regina,” Emma tried, her fingers gently grasping the fabric that covered the other woman’s waist. “I won’t let you be miserable for the rest of your life. And… and besides, this isn’t just about you, you know? Henry, he… he needs to be able to see his family, and unless we break the curse, he won’t be able to. You know never seeing his grandparents again would devastate him.”

Regina pursed her lips, but stayed silent. No solution she could think of sounded ideal, and that worried her. 

“Look, maybe we can just… let’s just talk to my parents about it, alright?” Emma suggested, still trying to sound optimistic despite their severe lack of options. “Maybe they can give us a different perspective, okay? Or maybe Gold will have a better solution than just charging in and trying to take out a dragon. We don’t need to get all stubborn and sacrificial over each other just yet.”

“ _No one_ is being sacrificial,” Regina responded fiercely, not accepting that outcome in the slightest, but Emma quickly shook her head and tried to backtrack in order to explain what she was referring to.

“No, I just—I meant, you know, the whole ‘trying to protect each other’ thing. I say I’m going in without you, you say you’re going in without me, when we both know in the end we’re gonna be down there together like huge idiots anyway, despite the risks it poses. I don’t know; maybe we’ll just have to be careful not to go near one another, so nothing magical happens. We’ll figure it out. I mean… in the end, we’re probably stronger together anyway, right? Two against a dragon is better odds than one against a dragon.”

Regina was about to dispute that, as she didn’t like the idea of risking _both_ of their lives and possibly leaving Henry parentless, but Emma placed a hand on her arm and spoke before she could. “Look, I know it’s not ideal. I know there’s so many fucking problems with this tentative plan I don’t even know where to begin really, but like you said, we don’t need to think about this right now. We’ll talk to my parents, talk to Gold… we’ll figure out a better way, Regina. I promise.”

Regina exhaled a small, defeated breath, and allowed herself to slump back completely against the other woman’s chest as the blonde held her. In the end, she knew they were most likely going to do this; it was just _how_ that was still up for debate. Maybe there was an easy solution they just hadn’t found yet, and as Regina looked out her window at her yard below, she prayed that they would be able to; because she knew, despite how hard she once fought for such a thing, she would never be able to live with herself if Emma ended up getting herself killed over something so…

Over something so _stupid_ as Regina’s happiness.

**TBC…**


End file.
